


The Poison Tree

by lost_spook



Category: Dracula (TV 1968)
Genre: Blood, Dark, Edwardian Period, F/M, Hypnotism, M/M, Post-Canon, References to Mina Harker/Lucy Weston, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Vampires, Victorian, World War I, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-25
Updated: 2016-11-25
Packaged: 2018-09-02 05:09:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 27,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8652205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lost_spook/pseuds/lost_spook
Summary: Dracula may have been defeated, but the future has never been less certain for Jonathan and Mina.  Everything has changed, especially the Harkers themselves…





	1. Prologue: To Let

**Author's Note:**

  * For [calliopes_pen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/calliopes_pen/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide! I don't know what to apologise for first: that I let the fic run away with me, or for the fact that perhaps it's not as dark as you'd like, or that it's not for your book prompt where Jonathan raves "sweetly and charmingly" at all the nuns. May the Yule-fairy also bring you many bonus goodies, but I hope very much that you enjoy this. I had a lot of fun writing it for you.
> 
> With many thanks to my betas, ClocketPatch and Persiflage (who deserve some sort of medal). Any remaining errors are, inevitably and entirely, my own.
> 
> For any brave soul reading this without much knowledge of this particular adaptation of _Dracula_ , it's probably most important to know that Jonathan and Renfield are combined, while Arthur and Quincy don't exist (so Lucy is engaged to Dr Seward) and there's some canonical Mina/Lucy. All of the action takes place in Whitby.

The letter, when it arrived at the property agents’ office in London, was passed in a circuitous route from desk to desk before reaching its destination. No one wanted to be the man to pass it along to Mr Allworthy, knowing how little it would do to improve his permanent bad temper. Honestly, wondered the last of the clerks, as he steeled himself to deliver the message, how difficult was it to sell a house? What the devil was going on up there in the north?

 

_23rd March 1911_

_Mr Allworthy,_

_With regards to your telegram of this morning, allow me to yet again assure you that I am doing everything within my power to overcome the difficulties concerning this particular property. I fear that I cannot in my previous communications have adequately outlined them to you. They are as follows:_

_The previous tenant had been a recluse for over ten years prior to his decease and little work had been done on the building during that time, especially in the last few years. Not an uncommon issue and you may be certain that I took all the usual measures to clean and renovate the house and grounds._

_However, my efforts to engage the appropriate workmen has been at every turn frustrated by the evil reputation the building has acquired since the proprietor’s last visit – in particular in the months before and after the most recent occupant’s death of November last. It is all pure nonsense, but talk of curses and haunting prevailed to drive away prospective builders, carpenters, decorators, tilers, gardeners &c. &c. Naturally, I took the common sense angle and was firm with all, promising not only good wages, but a bonus for work well and speedily done._

_This did not suffice to solve the problem. Retaining the workmen proved extremely difficult, several of them leaving without any explanation, others stopping to regale me with yet more tales of ghosts, the Un-Dead, and other such lurid imaginings accompanied by an insistence that they would not remain in the house a moment longer, not for all the money in the kingdom._

_I have to confess that while I give no credence to such fanciful talk, nevertheless I suspect there must be some real cause at the root of it, although I have as yet failed to establish what that could be. I have spoken to the constable about the possibility of a tramp occupying the rooms at night, had the place gone over for pests (rats, mice, nesting birds) that might be the source of the strange sounds and unexplained movement, drops in temperature, pools of blood and other such instances that have so unfortunately interrupted showings whenever I have managed to attract a client’s interest. (Few locals are willing to view it, so I must continually advertise further afield!)_

_If this continues any longer, I shall be at such a loss that I shall myself be forced to believe in creatures of the night._

_May I suggest that we enquire as to whether the client might consider selling as land for development? Once razed to the ground and salted over, the house itself might finally be seen once more as the attractive property it ought to be given its size, design and desirable location._

_Please advise._

_Yours faithfully,_

_G. Simmons_

 

_+CEASE BLITHERING SIMMONS STOP NO MORE EXCUSES STOP LET DAMNED PLACE OR BE SENT TO NEAREST ASYLUM STOP ALLWORTHY+_

 

Mr Allworthy’s blistering telegram was hardly unexpected – his efforts in that direction were legendary within the firm – but it helped nothing. Gabriel Simmons tucked the latest into his jacket pocket with a sigh and refrained from sending a reply to note that the nearest asylum was, indeed, much too near for comfort.

He headed back to the property, hoping, despite the odds, that this time he would find at least one workman still present and about their business. He must remain grateful that the most recently employed painter and decorator had at least finished the room he’d started before declaring that he could not be persuaded to tackle any of the other rooms, not for love nor money, a refrain that was becoming tiresomely familiar. Gabriel wanted in particular to have a word with the man he’d brought in to see about mending the east wall of the garden, although he’d last seen him yesterday evening hurrying off to the nearest public house, muttering wildly about the former tenant wandering about the place at dusk, so it was sadly unlikely.

It was nearly dusk now, Gabriel thought with amusement. He might see the ghost for himself if that was so – maybe have a stiff word with him over the state in which he had left the house.

The house was predictably empty of labourers, but Gabriel found one of the gardeners still working in the grounds, standing there, closely examining an oddly stunted, black, and leafless tree Gabriel had noted before. He was tall, white-haired, and a little shabby-looking with hollowed cheeks, but it was a relief to at last see someone who had not run away in terror from the place. Gabriel didn’t remember seeing him before, but he was losing count of how many of the local men he had hired over these past two weeks.

When he turned, he gave Gabriel a small smile that was nevertheless the friendliest he had been granted these last ten days. He was not perhaps as old as Gabriel had first assumed, but it was hard to be certain. He turned with the slowness of age, but his face was little-lined.

Gabriel felt encouraged enough to ask him if he knew of the progress of the work on the east wall, or if he might be willing to take on the matter himself.

The man nodded, promising to do so on the morrow. “You’re the agent, aren’t you?” he added. “Then don’t worry. This house will soon be rid of all its current irregularities – you may trust me on that.”

It was an odd thing for a gardener to promise and Gabriel felt the first stirrings of unease about the stranger. Gabriel’s gaze was drawn again to the tree; it was the oddest thing in the garden – in the house, even. Why was the man standing there, touching its revolting, dead-looking branches? One of the other gardeners who’d tried to cut it back had gone so far as to claim it had bled at the result of his handiwork. Looking at it now, Gabriel could almost believe it. He must have it pulled up and burnt, he decided.

“I’ve no wish to cause your client any difficulties,” the man continued, still sounding perfectly casual and polite. “I suppose it’s fair to say that he’s been kind to me over the years, and I repay my debts.”

Gabriel was hard pressed not to take a step back. One of the workmen who’d claimed to have seen the deceased tenant had described the spectre – and his description fitted every particular of the man now in front him, calmly smiling at him. It was a suddenly uncomfortable realisation to make. Gabriel felt he ought to say something, but his mind was whirling with impossible notions he could not dismiss as easily as he should.

“Do you have a name?” asked the gardener (or possibly the resident ghost).

Gabriel felt his mouth go dry, but he forced himself not to show his alarm – after all, the man was no doubt only some well-known local character and Gabriel would be laughed at by everyone for subscribing to the very tales he’d been scoffing at for the last two weeks. “My name is Gabriel Simmons,” he said, and then somehow felt compelled to add: “Sir.”

The apparition or gardener, whatever he might be, seemed to find that amusing. He leant back against the awful tree and gave a laugh. “How very strange,” he said. “After all these years, has Seward sent me an angel? Once, you know, they would not even let me have a puppy!”

 

Gabriel hardly knew what he did after. The only two things he could be certain of were that first he had run for the boarding house and locked himself in, for that was where he found himself in the morning, and second, that he had at some point before that stopped to telephone head office. Unfortunately for both of them, Mr Allworthy had a bad habit of working late. Gabriel knew the latter, because he had another angry telegram to prove it:

_+AM SENDING COLLINS AS REPLACEMENT STOP TAKE HOLIDAY SEE DOCTOR AT ONCE STOP THIS IS AN ORDER STOP ALLWORTHY STOP+_

Oh, dear, thought Gabriel, feeling sick. Whatever had he said? And why had he leapt to such wild conclusions about the man in the garden? It was everybody else’s lurid imaginings, that was what it was; they were infectious. And yet, even as he told himself that, he had nevertheless locked himself in his room in a seaside boarding house over two hundred miles from home, and he had not yet ceased shivering.

Meanwhile, in his dreams at night, over and over, he returned to the house.

 

It made quite the minor sensation back at Head Office when Simmons vanished. It was a mystery that persisted in the firm for a good few years afterwards: whatever _had_ happened to Simmons, they wondered? He had always seemed like a reasonable sort of fellow, not one to suddenly break down and run away from the task in hand. Collins, after he had arrived in Whitby to take over the business, had never been able to shed any light on the subject. He’d had no such problem with the damned house, he said. That was all _he_ knew. He sold it in less than two weeks, despite a few squeamish locals.

Some things, the eldest of the clerks always maintained when the topic resurfaced, were just not meant to be known; that was all there was to it. And when he said it, he’d cross himself and shiver.


	2. this dark thing that sleeps in me

When he had first been trapped in Count Dracula’s castle, Jonathan had wanted nothing more than to be safe in England with his wife, Mina. Now that he was, he wasn’t sure where he wanted to be, or with whom.

He moved cautiously, so as not to wake her, lying close beside him. Neither of them had been sleeping well of late – Dracula’s end was not yet two weeks behind them – and he didn’t want to rob her of that precious commodity. He was also wary of what might happen if he did. Things were far from normal yet. He was not certain he would ever understand what normal was anymore.

He had remained at the asylum for a few days after that fateful night in the graveyard, but since the cause of his madness had been removed and he was shaken but largely sane – or as far as anyone was in this strange world – Dr Seward and the Professor had let him go back to Mrs Weston’s house and to Mina.

Was it Jonathan’s imagination or had things grown worse again since then? He felt sure they had. He felt sure it was Mina. He looked back at her with revulsion that distressed him and gave a shudder. He didn’t know what was worse now – waking or sleeping. In sleep, he dreamed of the Master and the more his waking self came back to the realities of life, the more the echoes of his Master became a source of terror to him; no longer his one delight.

And he wondered, was the worst part of it the nightmares or the fact that such wonder, such sweetness had been corrupted into horror? He remembered Mina, of course; he remembered how he should feel about Mina, but he couldn’t quite find it in him any more. And between them lay a writhing mass of jealousy and hate that he hid desperately. (Whatever he was, whatever he wanted or didn’t want, he didn’t want to be locked away again). He’d felt much the same hate and anger for the Professor, too, but the Professor had gone and now there was only Mina left to blame. The doctor he ignored; the doctor was nothing. It was Mina’s fault, all of it – that Jonathan had been abandoned, that the Master had been destroyed, that they had made such a hollow monster out of what he had been, and worst of all, that she was so unworthy of being favoured. 

“Jonathan,” said Mina, raising herself from her pillow beside him. “Stop it – you must go back to sleep.”

He turned his head, wary of her; his hands shaking under the covers. He never knew what she would be next – and he hardly knew if he could trust yet that any of what he thought he heard or saw was true.

She stroked his cheek, resting her hand then at the nape of his neck, fingers gripping his hair. She leant in her head, whispering into his ear and he thought he heard the echo of another voice and he shivered, this time with both horror and delight. “This will not help. Be patient. Wait. And for heaven’s sake,” she said, drawing back a little, and sounding more like Mina, enough so as to confuse him utterly, “ _do_ get some sleep, my love.”

When he woke again, he had no idea if that had been a dream like the rest. He thought it must have been, but the not-knowing terrified him.

 

It was over. It was _over_. Mina repeated it to herself silently, like a mantra, trying to force the fact into her mind and silence the sense of unease that remained. When she looked in the mirror as she dressed, there was no scar burned into her forehead and only the faintest marks on her neck. She felt well, or at least well enough, and she had experienced no more strange lapses of time or memory.

There was one thing, however: Dracula’s ring. She kept it locked in a box at night and carried it hidden about her by day lest Jonathan should find it. She wasn’t sure how she had come to pick it up, but the moments around sunrise in the graveyard when Dracula had finally crumbled into dust were still highly muddled in her mind.

She should tell someone, of course. She should have told Professor Van Helsing, but she hadn’t been able to do it, feeling almost afraid of him and what he might do to her if she confessed. She should tell Jonathan now because, after all, they always had been able to tell each other everything, but she was even more afraid of what Jonathan might do. The Professor and Dr Seward had pronounced him well enough to come back to the Westons’ house with her now, but his state was still fragile. Dracula had not bitten Jonathan, as far as they knew; he had driven her poor darling out of his mind and she hated to think how the discovery of the ring might overset him.

She didn’t let herself think that perhaps she kept it because she wanted to. Last night, she had dreamt again of Lucy, falling into a blissful memory of those caresses that had stirred her so deeply, perhaps even more so than Jonathan’s. (She had, after all, loved Lucy the longer; that was true.) If she destroyed the ring, would she still dream of Lucy? And she had been cast aside by both Lucy and Jonathan, and left outside the terrible truth that the Professor and Dr Seward had discovered, unable to help or understand. If somewhere, deep down, in reaction, she wanted the power the ring might yet offer her as a kind of revenge, she shut her eyes to the possibility. She would never do a thing like that.

Besides, the chief difficulty was how to be safely rid of such an item. Would even casting it off the cliff be certain? What if it was immediately washed back ashore? Whom might it hurt? If she left it hidden or buried somewhere in the house or grounds, might Jonathan find it and be thrown off balance again?

She had earnestly questioned Professor Van Helsing about vampires and what the Count truly had been, and although he had at first told her that the best thing she could do to heal was to think of the episode as little as possible, she had insisted. What, she had asked, if there might be any lingering influence in either her or Jonathan? She had to know what precautions she should take. The Professor had conceded her point and, once started on his subject, had eventually grown enthusiastic enough to tell her almost everything he knew, and was only reminded to omit the most unpleasant details if Dr Seward was present to interrupt him with a warning word or cough. It had been useful, Mina decided, touching the ring. Either way, it would be _useful_.

For a moment, when she glanced back at the mirror, she almost thought it had distorted her face somehow, but it must have been a mere trick of the light.

Jonathan was still sleeping, if restlessly, and she knew he had been doing so too little, so she moved quietly out of the room, reminding herself that, whatever she thought, for his sake she must destroy the last physical part of the Count. Then there would be nothing more remaining, and they could both move forward and heal.

She refused to ask herself what if that last remaining darkness was not in the object, but in her – or in Jonathan. Instead, she went downstairs to help poor Mrs Weston, who was frailer than ever after Lucy’s death, but the sense of unease followed her, unacknowledged and unchallenged.

 

Jonathan hung about in the drawing room, waiting for Dr Seward to leave Mrs Weston’s room. He had been doing so rather impatiently for the last ten minutes. He was not sure where Mina was; she had gone out for a walk before he had woken. That only made him feel more unsettled. It wasn’t so much that he wanted her to be here just now – he found himself relieved she wasn’t – but he worried about what she might be doing.

When the doctor finally emerged, Jonathan turned, standing by the door to the hallway, and hurried back over. “Dr Seward? If I might have a word?”

“Of course. I meant to see you again today, in any case,” Seward said, registering Jonathan’s presence and giving him a small, tired smile in greeting, before casting an anxious glance over him. “Is there some trouble?”

Jonathan gave a slight, careless shrug. “It’s hard to tell. What would you say is normal progress in my case? I don’t sleep well and when I do, I have nightmares – and I worry about Mina.”

“That’s natural enough,” said Seward, straightening fractionally as he instinctively assumed a more professional stance. “It will take time, you know. There’s no way round that. But sit down – tell me what it is that concerns you in particular.”

Jonathan remained standing, pacing about the room. He had spent too long shut away – in the castle, on board the _Demeter_ , and in the asylum – and grew rapidly restless in one place, especially sitting. He didn’t know exactly what he wanted to ask Seward, anyway. He wanted the doctor to know, to tell him what to do. He started on the topic that felt safest; the one that wasn’t obviously about him and his state of mind.

“Mina will not talk about any of it. She says it’s best not to – I think she worries about me. But we need to – we must.”

Dr Seward shifted uncomfortably in the chair he’d taken and cleared his throat. “You can hardly force her. It’s understandable. Nothing much I can do about that.” Then he leant forward again, as if concerned that he had not been helpful. “I could try and speak to her, I suppose, if you wished.”

“No,” said Jonathan in sudden panic. “You mustn’t! You can’t trust her! I think she’s still in league with – with _him_. The Count.” He’d nearly said the Master, but he knew he mustn’t call him that. 

Dr Seward drew back again, startled, and Jonathan swallowed, almost hearing the door of his cell slamming on him – the straight jacket binding his arms – and he shuddered.

“I’m sorry,” he said, hastily, stopping to sit on the couch in his earnestness at the need to convince Seward he hadn’t lapsed back into his old ravings. “Perhaps you _should_ talk to her. If it will take me time to recover, then it may be the same for her. But I feel – whether it is only in my mind or no – as if some evil lingers in her. So, if you do speak with her, I should take care, doctor.”

Dr Seward merely nodded, and Jonathan felt the immediate tension inside him ease. 

“Or, of course,” said Jonathan, as if he couldn’t quite help playing devil’s advocate, pushing his luck too far, “the evil is lingering in me and not poor Mina.”

Seward coughed again at that and then suddenly put his black bag down on the floor and fished in his pockets. Jonathan couldn’t understand what he might be doing and flinched back instinctively, even as Seward pulled his hand out, his fingers closed around a small object Jonathan couldn’t see. For a moment, they looked at each other and Jonathan decided that, no, _this_ was it: now, he was going back to his prison.

Instead, Seward leant forward, lines furrowing his forehead in concern. He cleared his throat a third time, shoved the unknown article back into his coat pocket, opened his mouth to speak, and then drew back, before finally saying, “You’re not comfortable with me, are you? That’s understandable.”

Jonathan would have tried to disclaim, but it was true, for a number of tangled reasons he didn’t want to pull out and identify. “No – well, yes – but it’s only –”

“Understandable,” Seward repeated. “But I can’t recommend another doctor in the circumstances, unfortunately. It would be difficult to explain.” He gave a slight smile at his heavy-handed humour. “Of course, I could write to the Professor and see if he can return if you would rather –”

Jonathan had to bite back the urge to panic again. “No,” he managed to say perfectly calmly. “I’d prefer you to the Professor.”

“I’m not here to take you back,” Seward said. “You haven’t had a single relapse since that night, and we know what the ultimate cause of your condition was – and that it has been removed. If anything changes, I might ask you to return for treatment or to be kept under observation – but I _would_ ask. The only circumstance under which I would do anything else is if you became a danger to yourself or anyone else again – and I think, if that were the case, you would hardly want me to do otherwise. You have my word, Harker.”

Jonathan wasn’t sure he found that as reassuring as Dr Seward seemed to think it was, but he supposed that such things became relative if a person spent all their time in an insane asylum.

“Anyway,” said Seward, giving him a full smile this time, “I was only going to say that if you’re afraid of evil influences, we don’t need to bring Van Helsing back to test that.” He pulled the item back out of his pocket – a small carved wooden cross.

Jonathan raised his eyebrows.

“Yes, I know,” said Seward, a brief flush of deep embarrassment staining his cheeks. “I, er, promised Van Helsing – but never mind that. Take hold of it. Prove the point to yourself, as the Professor did before.”

Jonathan hesitated, fear of such symbols having become ingrained over the past few months, but he tried not to let that show and reached out to take the cross, curling his fingers around it. His skin didn’t burn. He breathed out, but couldn’t be sure that it didn’t feel oddly warm somehow, growing more so the longer he held it.

“There, you see,” said Seward, and took the cross back from him.

Jonathan held back from answering for a moment, still having no idea which way he wanted everything to play out, but he forced himself to make a play towards honesty and sanity. “It felt – warm. I can’t explain.”

“In your mind, Harker,” said Seward as he put it away; he didn’t want to deal with any other explanation, Jonathan suspected, and felt a sense of dark amusement at the realisation. Then Seward sighed slightly, and looked at him again. “You feared it burning you, and so you imagined it did. Open your hand.”

Jonathan did so.

“There is no mark. And the Professor performed similar tests – well, you cannot have forgotten.”

Jonathan clenched his open hand into a fist. “I can still feel the darkness – somewhere near, waiting. If it’s not me, then it has to be her.”

“You need more time to recover,” said Dr Seward. “I’ll speak to Mrs Harker and Mrs Perkins for you. You need calm and complete rest; I told them when you came home. I’ll ask them to let you have a room to yourself, just until you feel easier in your mind. And a sleeping draught if you need it. Rest will help.”

Jonathan nodded. “Yes. Thank you, doctor.”

“If you remain convinced that something is wrong – something beyond you, I should say,” Seward added, if unwillingly, “I shall write to the Professor at once.”

 

Mina returned from her walk, not much enlightened about what she should do. She was removing her gloves as she entered the drawing room, to find Jonathan and Dr Seward standing together, the doctor making his farewells as he reached for his coat. They both turned as she came in and, she thought, gave her a very _odd_ look. 

“Is something wrong?” she asked, her gaze flickering over them both, and then her mind leapt to the more probable explanation. “Oh, no – it isn’t Mrs Weston, is it? Doctor?”

Dr Seward moved forward to take her hand in an instinctive gesture of reassurance (and, oh, it would be so much easier if he wouldn’t do that; if he would only keep his distance). “No, no, Mrs Harker. There’s nothing to worry about. Mrs Weston seems a little better this morning, although – I think you know –”

Mina nodded. Lucy’s mother was dying; they all knew that. It was a matter of time. (She drew in her breath and gently removed her hand from his and forced herself to ignore the way something flared into dark life within her when he came too near. She could almost taste the blood in his veins – oh, horrid, horrid thought!)

“Well, yes,” said Dr Seward, drawing back, “I should go. Mrs Harker – a quick word, if I may?”

Mina gritted her teeth and followed him, trying to keep a safe distance, for his sake as well as for hers. (Was it, she wondered, only that he was untainted, unlike Jonathan, and well, unlike Mrs Weston, or was it something else, perhaps even something to do with poor Lucy?)

He explained about the need to give Jonathan more space, and Mina nodded dutifully and assured him that she would speak to Mrs Perkins; he could leave everything to her, and then she ushered him out of the door and let out a breath of relief, both because he had gone, and because she felt that space was something she needed as well as Jonathan.

 

Jonathan woke again in the early hours of the morning, this time alone. It was a relief not to have Mina there. He felt as if he could breathe easier. The world seemed more solid. Even though he opened his eyes, broken out of a nightmare, the shadows settled into comprehensible, mundane forms – no bats, no wolves, no creatures of the night.

It felt strangely lacking.

 

Mina also slept better. The ring was safely locked away and Jonathan wasn’t there to cry out. She came downstairs, feeling more alert and optimistic about finding a solution to her dilemma. She must, she decided over the course of breakfast, bury it somewhere on consecrated ground. That ought to keep it well and truly out of the reach of any malevolent force that might try to use it. Where, precisely, though? She would have to go for a walk later and see if she could discover a suitable spot – probably in or close by the church, not in the graveyard. She didn’t feel the graveyard could be considered safe.

“Oh, Mina,” said Mrs Weston, tottering into the room and sitting beside Mina at the table. “You look well this morning.”

Mina only smiled back since she couldn’t entirely say the same. Mrs Weston looked paler than ever in her mourning clothes. “Thank you. I was planning to go into town later on. Is there anything you need?”

“Nothing that I can think of, but Perks was saying something yesterday about – oh I forget what it was now. Was it nutmeg or cinnamon?”

Mina laughed, glad to be talking of such normal, trivial things. There had been so much fear and grieving, so many certainties overturned in the last few weeks that it felt quite odd. “I shall be sure to ask her.”

“Dear Perks,” sighed Mrs Weston, diverted from the topic of conversation. “She was telling me I looked peaky this morning and perhaps I should stay in bed. I do think she believes she can bully me into living longer if she tries hard enough.”

Mina bit back a smile. “I don’t think I should put it past her. She only has your interests at heart, Mrs Weston. She cares for you a great deal. She isn’t the only one.”

“Oh, yes,” said Mrs Weston, without much interest. She had not been told all the details of her trouble – Mina probably understood more than she did – and could be impatient with everyone else’s fussing, but underneath, Mina suspected that she knew very well what was coming. Lucy’s death had left her in a muted state of shock, and this was almost as much like her old talkative self she had been since that terrible event. Mrs Weston looked across at Mina and then away again, almost shiftily. “You mustn’t mind too much, my dear. I don’t. Oh, dear, is that wicked of me?”

“Is what wicked of you?”

“I’m glad,” Mrs Weston said, with sudden quiet weariness. “That I shan’t be too long in following her. It is unbearable to lose one’s child – quite like that. That was my greatest worry, you see – leaving her. Of course, she would have had John – dear John – but it is not quite the same.” She got up and began to rearrange a plant and two of the ornaments on the chest of drawers nearby. “So, I find I am glad after all.”

Mina swallowed, and hung down her head. And Mrs Weston didn’t even know the half of it; the details she had only learned herself since the night in the graveyard. She restrained a shiver, since _that_ Lucy’s mother must never know. Then she steadied herself and looked up again. “None of it is your doing, Mrs Weston. It might be wicked if it were – but no, how can it be?” 

“My poor child,” murmured Mrs Weston distantly, hardly appearing to listen. 

Mina felt moved to rise and walk over to the older woman, surprising Mrs Weston by a brief kiss to her cheek, and then left the room, unable to trust herself not to betray her emotions; she was trembling at the painful memories that had been awakened. She, too, had wanted just that badly to rejoin Lucy. She must remember that, she thought, even if she didn’t care to revisit her despair. For Lucy had been saved in the end, and that must help her guard against temptation.

 

Mina’s plans to go out into the town were temporarily thwarted by an unwanted visit from a distant cousin of Mrs Weston’s – a Mr James – who arrived in the afternoon, and remained no matter how many hints they dropped about the passing of time. Perks swept Mrs Weston off to her room fairly early in the visit, but that did not deter the gentleman who calmly carried on talking to Mina and Jonathan and helped himself to another scone.

Dr Seward arrived for his session with Jonathan, who jumped up, glad to escape their interminable guest, only to be foiled by Perks, who claimed the doctor for Mrs Weston, evidently worried by some change in her, and Jonathan had to sit back down, shooting Mina a guilty smile.

It felt so very normal, thought Mina. She let herself believe that it really was all over. After all, it was hardly wonderful that she and Jonathan should be so confused after what had happened, that they might conjure up non-existent terrors to fear, and, above all, as Dr Seward kept reminding them, that recovery from such things required patience and time. Perhaps they were finally making progress.

Then Jonathan, reaching for a scone, destroyed that moment of complacence. A fly had landed in the jam, but he picked it up regardless, and ate it, seeming not to notice. When Mina stiffened and glared at him for it, he only shot her a puzzled look across the table. He seemed to have no idea what he’d done. Tea and jam and fly, she thought, and was revolted.

Mina subsided into silence, letting Mr James drone on at Jonathan, ignoring her, while she sat, head down with her hands in her lap, unable to quite do anything else until finally, she could bear it no longer, and she rose. “Please excuse me, Mr James,” she said, “but I have some errands I simply must attend to.”

Mr James and Jonathan stood in surprise, and Mr James finally started muttering about having perhaps overstayed his welcome, but Mina didn’t stop to hear. She left the room and ran upstairs to her chamber, putting her jacket on over her blouse, and taking the dreadful ring out of its box and slipping it into her pocket. She put her hand over her mouth, stifling tears. It was silly to find that one small thing so very much more upsetting than all the more terrible incidents, but she did.

 

When she walked back down the stairs and into the hallway, she found Dr Seward standing there with Mrs Perkins.

“Mrs Harker,” Dr Seward said, taking his coat from the diminutive housekeeper. “May I walk with you a little way? I would like a word, if it’s not too much trouble.”

She nodded, a little bemused. “Of course. But shouldn’t you be seeing Jonathan? Oh, thank you, Mrs Perkins,” she added as the housekeeper rescued her hat from the floor.

“I think Mr James must have worn him out,” said Dr Seward. He waited until they had stepped out of the door, out of the hearing of Perkins. “Told him to rest instead for today. Can’t say that I’m surprised, though. Dreadful fellow, although I suppose one shouldn’t say so.”

Mina still felt unsettled, even angry. “Why not? He’s a terrible, selfish old bore!”

“Mrs Harker!” said Dr Seward, but he was amused as well as shocked; she saw the smile he tried stuffily to hide. “In any case,” he said, “Mr Harker also wanted me to speak to you and this seemed like a good opportunity.”

Mina frowned, not really liking the idea of the two of them discussing her behind her back. “Oh?” she said. “Somehow that sounds ominous.”

“No, no,” said Dr Seward. “He’s merely worried about you.”

“ _Is_ he?” Mina swung around, stopping before they reached the garden gate. That thought cut through her irritable mood. She had tried to bury her fear, but she couldn’t help but wonder if Jonathan still cared about her at all. The repeated rejections and refusal to know her cut deep even now that she understood the cause. Sometimes, though, as in the drawing room earlier, he seemed to approach his old self and hope would leap in her, but then he would turn and be painfully wary of her. Sometimes she even felt that silently he hated her. “Oh, do you think so?”

Dr Seward nodded. “He thinks – well, he wonders – I mean, that is to say –” He lost himself and coughed, before glancing back at her hopefully, as if she might have been able to translate his question back into coherent English. Eventually, when she didn’t, he frowned and said, “He, ah, wanted me to ask about your own recovery – how you were?”

“Surely he could ask me that himself?” Mina still felt bemused, before, suddenly, she felt she understood and all her annoyance flooded back. “Oh, I see – he doesn’t like to ask me to my face if I feel any remaining influence of the Count! He merely tells _you_ it might be so!”

Dr Seward attempted to demur, but after a few flustered moments, caved, and said, “Well, since you put it so bluntly: do you? None of us knows much of this sort of business, not even the Professor. Most of what he has is out of antiquated books of legend.”

“How dare you?” she said, instead of answering the question directly. She wouldn’t lie, not yet, but she couldn’t confess. So, she thought, it wasn’t an unfair question, but that didn’t alter her anger. “I know you mean no harm, Dr Seward, but it is hardly to be expected that I should be fully well and in good spirits after what is passed. Jonathan is not yet himself, Mrs Weston is very ill – and dear Lucy is still dead.”

She saw him flinch slightly at that and it gave her satisfaction.

“Mrs Harker –”

“I go on well enough, but I can hardly be happy,” said Mina, cutting in coldly. “Now, please go, Dr Seward. I don’t want you here – I don’t suppose anybody does!”

Something in his face closed in, but he merely gave a brief grunt and nodded to her, before walking away. Mina watched him go, raising her chin, feeling uncharacteristic, cruel triumph – every bit as petty and unpleasant an incident as Jonathan’s lapse over the tea things had been.

Mina put a hand to her mouth, her annoyance driven away by horror. She looked up again and then hastily ran forward to catch Dr Seward before he turned the corner out of sight. “Oh, Dr Seward,” she said, reaching him; a little out of breath as she caught at his arm. “I’m so sorry. Please forgive me – I didn’t mean it!” She didn’t quite dare venture as far as telling him the truth, but she let go of his jacket and gave him a hopeful smile. “You’re right, I suppose; that’s the root of the trouble. We none of us are quite ourselves yet. I shouldn’t take it out on you. I know you meant it kindly.”

“No, no,” he said, eager to brush over the matter, easily mollified by her apology.

She took his arm again. “So, in answer to your question, I do think I am well enough. But I too have bad dreams, and I worry about Jonathan – and I snap unforgivably at friends without the least cause.” She shot a glance up at him and made him laugh, if unwillingly.

 

Jonathan waited until he was sure Mina and the doctor had gone and then jumped up off the couch again. He was feeling tired, but not as much so as he had claimed to Dr Seward. It wasn’t about backsliding, of course. It was merely that if Mina was out, he had a good chance to search her room once more. He would save her from that ring, even if it meant he had to keep it. Somehow, he would make that sacrifice. He paused, standing there, dreaming of what it might be like to hear his Master’s voice again.

He walked up the stairs, passing one of the maids on the way up, and then let himself into Mina’s room. Mina had locked it in that careful way of hers, but Mrs Weston had a bunch of spare household keys in a drawer. He shouldn’t pry into such places, but sometimes when he grew restless, he found himself doing so, almost compulsively; he wasn’t sure why.

Inside the room, he went straight for the dressing table, opening up the jewellery box, and not finding what he sought. He tried the two small drawers – one on either side, but both were open and held only items of no interest – handkerchiefs and ribbons and stockings, a small sewing kit, and other such oddments.

She had it with her, he thought, and sat back down on the bed, with a small smile. Of course she did. Was she even now being further transformed? And did he fear that or hope for it? He didn’t dare probe himself for the answer.

The strange thing was that even though he’d come in search of the last remnant of his Master, all that he found here was Mina. The scent of her, the familiar articles in amongst those borrowed from Lucy all spoke to him of nothing else. He got up and crossed back to the dressing table, pulling out of the jewellery box, a silver locket. It gleamed in the light. She kept it well-polished. Mina would.

He opened it and held it up by the chain, looking at the pictures inside: Jonathan and Mina, like two strangers to him now. And yet, for perhaps the first time since he’d been claimed by the Master, it brought the emotions back to him. It was ironically easier without her – she was too tainted not to make him think, willingly or unwillingly, of the Count, but these objects were entirely innocent and somehow more eloquent. 

He sat there in her room for a while, and remembered.

 

Such a mood could not last, however. Reality was far too cruel. Jonathan woke yet again in the night from unnamed dreams, cold with sweat. In the morning, he wandered out in the garden and watched the last leaves falling from the trees. He argued with Mina several times in the days that followed; being snappish and unreasonable. (She was lecturing him, being impatient; she was cruelly withholding from him what he most wanted. Either way, she was unkind and unfair, and kept looking at him as if there was something wrong with him, not her.)

Life for him now seemed to be only a matter of struggling against impossible odds, all to regain the chance to slave away at meaningless tasks, to slowly decay, and to lose those one loved. It seemed to have nothing to offer in comparison to what had so recently been held out before him. None of it had meaning any more; the brief glimpses of it yesterday hadn’t lasted, they never did. It wasn’t only Mina that was unfair; everything was unfair and the only love he wanted was eternal, not mere corruptible, mortal fare.

“Harker?” said Dr Seward. 

They were midway through another session and Jonathan wondered why they must go through it all again; these pointless questions and answers. It wasn’t as if he had anything new to say. Nothing had changed. He leant back in his chair, fighting back the urge to tell the doctor that, when he put his hand in his pocket and found the locket he’d taken. He breathed out again and closed his eyes. This was what he was trying to regain, wasn’t it?

“Forgive me, doctor,” he said. “I know you’ll say I’m being impatient, but this doesn’t seem to be getting us very far.”

“Well, yes, I would,” said Dr Seward. “It’s not been very long yet.”

Jonathan leant forward. “But I want to remember! No, no, that’s not quite right. I remember my life before I went to the Count’s castle quite clearly – but it seems so distant and meaningless. I want to bring it nearer.”

“I see,” said Dr Seward, straightening himself. “Yes, very good indeed. But I’m afraid there aren’t any quick ways to make that happen. Perhaps Mrs Harker could talk you through some shared memories –?”

“Do you think she hasn’t?” said Jonathan, although if he was honest, she had soon stopped trying, because he had snapped at her for it. “I wondered if there was something we could use. What about hypnotism? It worked with the Professor. Perhaps that might help?”

Dr Seward cleared his throat. “Yes, true, it might.” He lowered his notebook and pen and tapped on the pages with his free hand. “Unfortunately, unlike the Professor, I’ve never been able to induce such a state in a patient. I suppose – they do say it is a good deal easier with a subject used to the process, but I don’t know. It’s not to be taken lightly and I can’t claim to be an expert, although I have read a deal on the subject.”

“But it shouldn’t do any _harm_ , should it?”

“Your case is so unpredictable that I shouldn’t like to say. Much as I sympathise with your impatience, I’m afraid time is the key.” 

Jonathan watched him. “But isn’t anything that might help worth a try? I’d think so.”

“Well, I suppose –” Dr Seward said, then hesitated, and patted his pockets. “The Professor always used a trinket of some kind, but I don’t really have –”

Jonathan bit back annoyance, and pulled out the locket, with a sudden, rare smile. “Well, what could be more appropriate than this?”

Dr Seward took it from him, hanging it from his fingers. “I suppose you’re right,” he said eventually. “There cannot be any harm in trying.”

 

Dr Seward was unfortunately right about his prowess in the field of mesmerism, or more accurately, the lack of it. After several failed attempts, he lowered his hand with a short sigh. “I’m sorry, Harker. It’s as I feared. This is getting us nowhere.”

“One last try,” Jonathan urged him. “I’m sure it would have worked just then, if Susan hadn’t come in for the tea things. Go on.” He wasn’t sure that was true, but for some reason, he felt unwilling to give up on the attempt.

Dr Seward was slow to pick the locket back up, clearly reluctant, but then he nodded. “One more try, then.” He grasped the locket by its chain again and raised it so that Jonathan could watch it, even as the doctor kept a careful eye on him, but despite that, nothing happened. 

It was useless – all useless, Jonathan thought. He would be trapped forever in this twilight state, neither one thing nor the other, feeling nothing, save in his dreams. He let his eyes close, as if the attempt at mesmerism was working after all. He abandoned the locket and let his mind empty and clear. The truth seemed suddenly plain: he must cease to struggle against what he had become. The moth didn’t crawl back inside the chrysalis; the chrysalis couldn’t wriggle itself back into its caterpillar life. He had become something new, and that was a gift he should claim. He knew how to now, as if he could yet hear his Master’s voice in his mind. It was so simple; he couldn’t believe what a fool he had been, what fools the others all were.

Jonathan opened his eyes, looking at Seward, with the silver locket swinging on its chain between then. He gave a small smile; his eyes dark with intent. “Try just a little longer,” he said softly. “Concentrate, doctor. Oh, but how thoughtless of me. It must be so tiring for you. Of course you want to stop now, stop and rest. Let me.” He reached out to catch the locket as the chain slipped through Seward’s fingers. It all was so amazingly easy once you understood, he thought, fighting the urge to laugh.

“And you’re so tired anyway – working too hard, sleeping too little. There are better ways to hide. I’ll show you, if you like – but first, doctor, you must rest.”

Seward’s head sagged down, his chin nodding against his breast, eyes barely open. Jonathan had to fight the urge to laugh again. It seemed so very amusing.

The door snapped shut, shattering the moment, and Jonathan looked to see Mina standing in the doorway, even as Seward shook himself and woke fully, and they both rose to greet her.

“Dr Seward,” Mina said, after a brief pause. “I didn’t mean to interrupt you – I must apologise. I had no idea you were still here. Is something wrong?”

He gathered his things. “No, no, not at all. I was trying to see if mesmerism might help your husband, but I think we must wait for the Professor. I’m sorry again, Harker.”

Mina glanced at Jonathan, who kept silent for the moment. “I see,” she said, a little coldly. “Then I think you have been here longer than you meant – you should go.”

Seward dug out his small pocket watch. “Good heavens, yes. You must forgive me – Harker, I’ll be back again the day after tomorrow.”

“You do see what I mean, don’t you?” said Jonathan in an undertone, following Seward out into the hallway, nodding back towards Mina. 

Seward took his coat. “I have to admit, she wasn’t entirely herself the other day – but I’m not sure you should read anything more sinister into that than in your own case.” He put a hand up to his forehead and added with weary impatience, “Please believe me, Harker – these things take time.”

 

Mina rounded on Jonathan as soon as he came back into the room, but he merely smiled at her and caught at her hands, startling her enough that she merely looked at him, waiting for him to explain.

“There’s nothing to worry about,” he told her, and pressed the locket into her hand. “See. I was only trying to think of you. To think of us.”

She drew in her breath, and then put her arms around him. “Oh, Jonathan!”

“I think I feel a little better already,” he said, and caught her by the waist, as he used to, pulling her into his arms and down onto the couch. Mina first clung to him, and then drew back, worried lines beginning to form on her brow; questions evidently rising in her mind.

Jonathan felt enormous pity for her, fighting so hard. It was such foolishness, when what was offered was in truth the most marvellous thing in the world. He extended his pity out to Seward, too, hiding away from it. All of that tiresome worrying and struggling – all it earned either of them was exhaustion; it made them easy prey. “Ssh,” he said, forestalling her, even kissing her briefly, then stroking her hair, letting her bury her face against his jacket. She was trembling, swallowing back tears – fighting, always still fighting! He stroked her again, felt her finally relax against him.

“Oh, Mina,” he said, softly, into her hair. “It will all be all right, I promise.”

For once she didn’t say anything, and though she seemed momentarily about to raise her head, to ask some questions, she instead let out a soft sigh and a few minutes later sagged back further against him, heavy and limp, sleeping in his arms.

Jonathan smiled. He wanted to look for the ring now – she must have it – but he still heard that calm, inner voice, the one that made everything so beautifully plain, and he restrained himself. She would take hold of it fully herself and become both his Master and mistress in one. He need do nothing. She would understand at last, as he did, that they were not the ones who were sick: they were the only ones who were whole. In time, they might save everyone.

Mina stirred slightly in his arms, and he held her more tightly. “Ssh, shh,” he said. “It will all be well in the morning. You’ll see, Mina – you’ll see!”


	3. Interlude: your bad dreams (possess and endow me)

Gabriel should have done as Mr Allworthy had ordered and seen a doctor. He should at the very least have left the house alone. But he really couldn’t sit around waiting for Collins to finally arrive when there were loose ends to be tied up. Besides, he was determined not to be driven away by a harmless stranger who had no doubt only been one of the workmen. Certainly, whoever he had been, he had done nothing to make Gabriel believe him to be a spectre. When he thought of it, Gabriel blushed for shame at his own folly.

An irrational fear of the encounter dogged Gabriel, though, even in the daylight and despite his return to common sense. At the same time, there were also strange, alluring dreams that lingered in his mind. He couldn’t quite remember what they had been he woke, but even so they tugged at him and called him back to the house. 

After arguing with himself, he at last went back there, only two days after his fright, and later in the afternoon than he had intended. He would make a list of what was done and undone for Collins, he told himself. Anything else was not on, after all. (He was not sure if he believed his own excuse, but he shut out any other explanations.)

The house was exactly as he had left it: silent and mostly empty, dust sheets covering what furniture remained, looking like oddly shaped ghosts. Gabriel wandered through the place until he paused to watch the sun set from one of the windows and felt a weariness sweep over him. He meant to leave, but he stopped and sat down on a nearby white-draped couch, heedless of the dust. There was nothing to be afraid of here, he felt suddenly sure of that. The relief at knowing himself safe at last combined with the natural tiredness that came from his disturbed nights must have been what caused him to sink back against the cushioned sofa and drift into sleep.

When Gabriel awoke again, the room had been cast into gloom, twilight steadily fading into the darkness. He came to himself only slowly, heavy from his unexpected slumber, and at the same time feeling an odd prickling sensation along his skin: an excited, instinctive sense that he was now about to enter and understand those fleeting, captivating dreams. _Now_ , he thought without knowing where the idea had come from, _now it would come, now he would see Him again._

“You’re here,” said the man who was not the gardener, seeming impossibly to form into solidity out of the grey shadows of the room. He stepped nearer and perched on the edge of the couch. Gabriel struggled to straighten himself into a sitting position, but the man pushed him back. The movement was gentle but brooked no disobedience and Gabriel felt his will bend helplessly to the other’s. He wanted to speak but words failed him as he looked into the stranger’s pale face. The man seemed ageless – there was something indefinably ancient in his gaze, yet his skin was unlined. His hair was white yet brown showed from underneath. Dreamily, Gabriel thought him beautiful in his own uncanny way.

The man kept his hand over Gabriel’s heart where he had pushed him down and Gabriel felt, even through the sturdy layers of vest, shirt and waistcoat, as if the other was playing upon it as expertly as a true musician might upon an instrument. Any lurking alarm that had been trying to force its way through to the forefront of his mind evaporated as he felt his heartbeat slow, felt himself grow calm, his breathing settling down into a shallow, somnolent pattern. He sagged back against the sheet and sofa, weighted eyelids half-closed.

“Gabriel, you said,” the man murmured as he stroked Gabriel’s cheek with his fingers and smoothed back any stray strands of hair. “Is it a joke?”

Gabriel had passed beyond any thought of responding, his very self unravelling in the strange pleasures enveloping him. The man leant further forward, his face near to Gabriel’s as he unloosed his tie, and pulled it off, followed by the unwanted starched collar. His touch was cool and his breath tasted like earth and blood. Gabriel suddenly felt something of his earlier fear reawaken, his heart first fluttering against its cage before beating faster – whether desperate with fear or eager with anticipation for some great unknown, his dazed mind could not begin to disentangle.

Having laid bare Gabriel’s neck, the man ran a finger down it, and now the sense of anticipation was real and unbearable. Gabriel gave a soft moan, as the man – Master, he thought, his Master – bent nearer. Impossibly sharp teeth pricked Gabriel and terror finally made it through to the front of his brain for one last second before his Master raised his head back and down, sinking those fangs into his jugular. Gabriel cried out first at the pain, before everything misted back into pleasure, into ecstatic release. He prayed that it would never end.

“Blood is life,” he heard his Master murmur, maybe only inside Gabriel’s mind. It was true; Gabriel felt both – blood and life – lovingly drained out of him. It was the most deliriously exquisite way to die.


	4. the moon also is merciless

Mina woke in the grey minutes before dawn, lying in her bed with no memory of how she had got there. She moved and realised that she had Dracula’s ring so tightly clasped in one hand it was cutting into her. That, however, was not what had pulled her out of an unusually deep sleep. Not far from her, she could see the small shape of Florence, the youngest of Mrs Weston’s maids, kneeling by the grate. Mina swallowed, sensing blood: she saw only vulnerable young prey that had wandered into her lair. She felt a craving for blood run through her; even more than that, she knew she could take Florence without even the smallest struggle. 

Mina pulled herself into a sitting position, her mouth curving into a dark smile. “Florence? Is that you?”

The girl gasped out and twisted round, still on her knees, kindling, matches, and coal dust scattering over the rug. “M-miss! I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb you. You won’t tell Mrs Perkins, will you?”

Mina shook her head, Florence’s words barely having any meaning. She beckoned to her. Florence stood, slowly, her brow furrowing in puzzlement, and she took an unsteady step forward, as if she didn’t understand why she should. Mina’s smile grew as she watched her. She felt the power that filled her, the freedom of not having to obey the rules – oh, God, she was utterly drunk on the power. She could do anything, take anyone. She could find every insufferably arrogant man who had ever patronised her or kept her shut out of significant matters and make them bow before her, make them beg and grovel for her favour. She could take Florence and set her free also, transport her into a life free of toil; an unlife of bliss.

Her senses were becoming ever more acute: she could hear Florence’s heartbeat as she approached; she could hear the blood rushing around her young veins. She could even almost hear the girl’s thoughts: not many of them as yet, poor half-awake Florence, running behind time, worried about the wrath of Mrs Perkins, and hungry for breakfast.

 _Hungry._ Mina smiled again. Yes, she was hungry too, hungry for something she’d never yet tasted. She found it hard to breathe for a moment, and then, deflating slightly, became aware again of her humanity: she didn’t yet have the wherewithal to bite. She looked away from Florence, down at her own hand, curled tightly around the ring and she opened her fingers and let it fall onto the floorboards. For one moment, Mina thought she saw her own vampiric face reflected in the black stone set in it.

Three things happened almost at once: Mina breathed out and felt her blood lust clear, while Florence blinked and shook herself, looking all the more confused – and behind them, as it rose above the sea, the first faltering rays of sunlight crept into the room.

“Th-that’s quite all right, Florence,” said Mina, forcing herself to keep her tone light and natural. “I promise faithfully I won’t breathe a word to Mrs Perkins! Besides, I don’t think I need a fire this morning. It seems a little extravagant. Why don’t you hurry on to where you’re supposed to be?”

Florence hesitated, Mrs Perkins being a greater source of fear to her than Mina. “I ought to at least clean it out – but I suppose she won’t know, will she?”

Mina waited until the girl had gone and then sagged back against her pillows, weak with relief. She wasn’t at all sure what had happened. She remembered Jonathan seeming so much better than he had in a long while, but after that all was a blank. She shivered and blamed the ring and her own alien darkness. She didn’t want to drink blood and, she thought, she most certainly didn’t want an undead court of all the most obnoxious men she had ever met. Even aside from the moral objections, it was an appalling idea. Whatever would one _do_ with them all?

Despite the gravity of her predicament, or even because of it, she was struck by that and had to lie back and press her face into the pillow to stifle helpless, half-hysterical laughter. If only Lucy were here; she would see the joke in it.

That thought sobered her again: Lucy was not here, and Lucy was no longer one of Dracula’s elect. She should remember both those things when the darkness threatened to overwhelm her. They ought to be all the reason she needed to fight.

And, she thought firmly, she must take the ring to the hiding place she had decided upon on her excursions yesterday afternoon and bury it without delay. If this monstrous thing was like an infection or a fever, then she had reached crisis point and all that would dictate now whether she lived or died was her own strength. She couldn’t be sure that was enough. She must act before what little she had left failed her.

Mina lay back down after coming to her decision and when she woke again, she found to her dismay, that not only had she accidentally fallen back to sleep but that it must be hours later; perhaps it was even afternoon already. The sun was shining outside, visible through the gap in the curtains, but it had moved on, no direct rays entering Mina’s room. She wondered why no one had woken her, but there was no time to waste in repining. She pulled herself up and set about dressing with all the haste she could muster. She must go to the church and leave that terrible object there. Hopefully, with it, she would leave all thoughts of blood and death behind her also.

 

There was never anyone as stupid as she, Mina thought, walking away from the church, back into the graveyard, even though she’d meant to avoid it. It was one thing to spy out a spot near to the church (between the grave of a former vicar and the entrance on the west), another entirely to walk there in daylight and bury something. It was completely impossible – there was always someone around. Mina had walked around the church and along the cliff top for as long as she dared, but all she had accomplished was to talk first for half an hour to the vicar about Mrs Weston’s health, for another fifteen minutes or so to the church warden about the weather, and then to half a dozen other people she barely even recognised who had to stopped to tell Miss Lucy’s friend how sorry they were to hear of her death.

 _Oh, heavens_ , thought Mina, walking inevitably to Lucy’s grave, as if she could ask her friend for advice. _What am I to do?_ She even wondered about casting herself off the cliff if she couldn't think of something else. Would it be such an unforgivable sin if she did it to protect innocent souls like Florence, or to prevent her drawing Jonathan into damnation after her? She shivered, and knelt by the Weston family crypt, pretending to rearrange the flowers, but close to despair.

 _Oh, come now_ , she told herself as she put her hand to a dying rose, its dried and shrivelled head of petals falling away under her fingers. _Remember everything you learned from the Professor; there must be some answer. You simply have to find it._ She swallowed, steeling her resolve to do so, and then hastily stood, realising that the hour was later than she had thought and the light was already beginning to fade. 

Perhaps it was also inevitable that as she turned, she was brought up short by the sight of Dr Seward walking towards the crypt. Fate, it seemed, was also against her.

 

Jonathan went to Mina’s room to sit by her. He’d been doing that on and off all day, eager for her to wake and to understand. He found, to his surprise, that she was not there any longer, when she should have been finding it hard to muster the energy to stir during the day.

“Oh, Mina,” he said, running his hand along the empty bed, all neatly made, “are you still fighting?”

It didn’t matter; it only meant a little while longer waiting – tomorrow or the day after, rather than today, perhaps. He could feel her falling. She couldn’t escape it now.

It would be so much better when they were together, finally of one mind once more. 

Today, tonight, tomorrow – soon. He could feel it. He remembered how it been for him. He had been afraid when he first arrived at the castle, although of what he could hardly say, but the fear had gone once he understood the truth of his Master – or perhaps it was more accurate to say that it had sharpened into pleasure. Jonathan laid his head down on Mina’s pillow, entranced merely at the memory. She wouldn’t be able to resist, either. Who could?

In his semi-dreaming state, Jonathan retraced his steps, following his Master back to his room. It had felt almost as if were floating rather than walking, still dazzled by the marvel that was the Count.

“Blood is life,” he had said, and he’d talked on about fields of blood around the castle until Jonathan could almost taste the power of it himself: of life, life falling and being consumed, becoming something more wonderful yet.

The Count had moved nearer – in Jonathan’s hazy memory it was never clear how he moved, whether on foot or if he was hovering over him somehow. It hadn’t mattered. He had hesitated there, his gaze straying to Jonathan’s neck; his mouth watering for a moment, as the women’s had. Jonathan hadn’t known what it meant, but he had wanted to. Whatever it was, he craved it.

“But no,” Dracula had said; he had other work for Jonathan. “We must both be patient – and wait.” Then the Master had patted his shoulder and smiled, and Jonathan had remembered no more, falling into the deepest sleep he had ever known. 

When he’d next awoken, it had been evening again and he had found himself ravenously hungry and yet despising of the food brought for him. He had used it instead to hunt down a rat. It was life that was necessary: life and blood, nothing else would do.

Jonathan opened his eyes and smiled. Mina would bring him what he wanted now. It was only a matter of time.

 

Mina caught her breath; her first instinct to run before she did something irrevocable and terrible, but Dr Seward was standing in her way, watching her in concern. 

“Mrs Harker,” he said, and then gave her a small, sad smile. “I suppose it’s not a surprise that we should meet here.”

She drew herself up. She could remain perfectly controlled; of course she could. Even if her hands were already unsteady as she became aware of his heartbeat, she wouldn’t let her gaze stray to his neck. She wouldn’t think of such things. She would remember Lucy. (Yes, said her treacherous mind, remember those fingers touching her, those dizzying, sweet kisses; oh, yes, remember. All is desire, so Lucy had told her.) “We have not before,” she said, hardly knowing what she was saying.

Dr Seward seemed to take it as a reproach, glancing quickly aside. “I couldn’t quite return – until now. I kept thinking of what she had become, not what she truly was.” He shook himself. “But it is best not to speak of that.”

“Why not?” said Mina, and she put out a hand and gripped his arm through his coat, the coat he’d draped around her on that morning; the last time they’d stood together in this place. “We should speak of it, you and I.”

“Of Lucy, as she was – yes. When we can. Not – that other. Never that.”

She looked up at him. “Oh, yes, John. How she pushed you away – how she had no time for you, only for the Count. Just as Jonathan rejected me – so lost in the Count that he couldn’t even know me. Shouldn’t we two, of all people, have so much to say to one another?”

Dr Seward tried, gently, to pry her hand away, saying nothing, only a worried crease deepening on his forehead. He swallowed, then tried to look away from her and couldn’t quite manage it. “Mrs Harker –”

“Mina,” she corrected him, not letting go. “Don’t pretend. Shouldn’t we take back what we are due from each other? Let them see how little we care.”

He bent his head. “But I do,” was all he said, softly, frowning now as if with effort.

Had she been any more herself, she would have laughed or cried a little at that, but she was not. She wanted something from him and she would have it: she would be ruthless. “Yes,” she said and, his coat hanging open, she stole her free hand up to his chest. “You do, because you have a heart, and it still beats. I hear it. But it hurts, doesn’t it? I know how to make that end – don’t tell me you don’t want that?”

Dr Seward closed his eyes.

Mina could read his very thoughts: so much of her own grief and loneliness and hurt in different measure echoed in him. Some of her earlier feelings of bloodlust and cruelty rose to the surface again. She only had to accept them, to embrace this transformation, and she could drink. He could not resist; he could not deny their connection or move away from her. She was in control.

“Together,” she said, “we can make all the hurt go away, I promise. I’ve felt it – I know.” She held his gaze as he leant in towards her, wrapped in a dream, and then she moved forward, but fell short of a lunge, stopped by a confusion of motives that resulted in something that was more of a stumble against him, bumping her face against his shoulder. She caught hold of his arms to steady herself and then stepped back. He still didn’t move and she put her hand to her mouth, fighting tears.

She’d felt the bloodlust, but she was yet only human and she wanted many things, not only lust or desire (for power, passion, blood) and the harsh truth was that those other things were irreconcilable with the power of the undead. She could acknowledge that power, drain the life blood out of Dr Seward, and return home to make Jonathan her slave, but there was nothing in earth or hell she could do to bring Lucy back. Claiming the Count’s power would divide her from Lucy forever. She couldn’t paper over Jonathan’s rejection by stealing John’s devotion, for vampirism would destroy it, as it would the one thing she wanted more than anything in that moment: the simple act of comfort between two human beings – a touch, an embrace, a mere smile of understanding. The Count had no comprehension that such things could have worth, but Mina did.

Maybe it was only Lucy’s tomb standing as a solid reminder at her back, maybe it was the small gold cross she had remembered to wear around her neck, or maybe Mina was winning the fight – she was not stronger than the Count, but perhaps she was a match for one small remnant of him – she didn’t know. She dropped down to the ground, still choking back tears, miserable and torn. To give in would be so much easier for all of them, and what was there to fight for when there was so much loss and pain all around?

“Mrs Harker?”

She lifted her head, and scrambled to her feet, shaking off Dr Seward’s arm as he tried to help her. Then she stepped back and held her breath, waiting for him to say something about what had happened.

“Are you well? Do you feel faint?” was all he said, however, trying to put a hand to her arm even as she pulled away in alarm.

She struggled to bring herself back to some semblance of normality and shook her head. “No, I am well – quite well. I must go home. Please, do excuse me.”

“I’ll escort you there,” he said. “Mrs Harker, don’t object. You can hardly go alone at this hour – certainly not in this state.” He hesitated, as Mina kept her distance from him. “I know you must miss Lucy.”

Mina nodded, and headed back towards the steps down to the Old Town. She put her hand to her cross on its chain and breathed a little easier. It tingled, though, under her hold, as it had not since the Count’s death. She glanced again at Dr Seward, unsure how he could have failed to notice her strange behaviour, but he asked no questions and demanded no explanations of her.

It was a long, difficult walk, down through the steep and narrow streets of the Old Town, over the water, and ascending to the more open area of the West Cliff. The darker it got, the more an awareness of his heartbeat quickened in her, re-awakening the unwanted bloodlust. She tightened her hold on the cross again until it hurt and when they reached the Westons’ house, she all but ran away from him; eager to shut herself away where she could not harm anyone.

She might have mastered herself today, but the battle must be fought again tonight, tomorrow, and on. Even if she was strong enough to keep claiming life over death, all she needed to hurt someone else was one slip, one moment of weakness, and that she could not allow.

 

The dreams were no longer nightmares. Jonathan gave himself up willingly to them – at least when he closed his eyes, he could lose himself in his Master’s presence. Yet tonight, he found himself trapped in a different nightmare – reliving the memory of that struggle in the graveyard. He saw his Master fall and watched, frozen, as he crumbled into rag and bone. Even as Jonathan cried out in despair, trying to change the outcome but unable even to move, the Count became dust and was blown away from him, mingling with the earth and the other remains buried there over the centuries.

Jonathan woke, sitting bolt upright in fear, his heart thumping against his chest, only to find Mina there, perching on the bed beside him, putting out a calming hand to his arm.

“Jonathan,” she said. “You were screaming – I thought you might wake everyone. Are you all right?”

He was shaken, but he caught at her wrist and managed a smile as the moonlight fell on his face. “I am now – now you’re here. You can help.”

“I shall try,” she said, smiling back and stroking his arm, then leaning across to put a hand to his face. “Anything to help you, dearest – tell me.”

Jonathan tried not to mind her petting and pawing at him; she who was holding back, mortal and defiled. It would help bring her to a better, purer state in the end. He propped himself up against the pillows and then caught hold of her by the arms. “You know exactly what I want – what I need. Give it to me, Mina. Give in to it – and favour me.”

“I – I can’t. I won’t!” She tried to pull away, but he tightened his hold, not caring if he bruised her. “Besides, I believe I know what you want and I don’t have it with me, so it is no use bullying me.”

He laughed. “You don’t need any trinkets. Claim what is in you, Mina. If you love me, you won’t deny me that.”

“It’s because I love you that I won’t,” she said. “Jonathan, let me go! I’ll find a way to save you, to save us both, I swear. Trust me.”

Jonathan shifted his hold, moving his hands to encircle her neck. “I won’t let go until you do,” he said into her ear. “But, of course, if you do what I ask, then you can command me to release you. There’s an irony, Mina.”

She was trembling in his hold – so weak, so pitiable – and she would have to give in. He wondered how long it would take her to accept the inevitable and tried to hurry her, kissing her as she remained frozen under his hold, her eyes closed. He saw, glinting in the pale moonlight, a chain under her nightgown – a cross perhaps. It unnerved him, but he was as yet a miserable mortal himself and not bound by that. He contemplated the risk of moving one hand to tear it off and make her surrender easier.

“Mina, why would you hold back from me?” he said, his voice still low. “We’ve always shared everything; now we can do so forever. Imagine it – widen your mind.”

She remained sitting there with her head hung down and her eyes closed, unmoving, and he thought she must be on the point of acceptance at last, when she raised her head again and glared at him. She put one of her hands up to his where they were paused around her neck. 

“Jonathan,” she said, “if you don’t let go of me this instant, I shall struggle and I shall scream any chance I get and rouse the entire household. I don’t think you’ll be so quick to threaten me with Mrs Perkins and the maids watching.”

“You wouldn’t,” he said, half-alarmed, half-amused at her bluff – it must be a bluff. “What about Mrs Weston?”

Mina swallowed but she didn’t flinch. “I had not forgotten Mrs Weston, so you may understand how serious I am.” Then she shifted, her voice softening. “Jonathan, this isn’t you. You would never hurt me. And even if you carried out your threat, what would my death avail you? You would have to explain to everyone in the morning – and I should think they would put you straight back in the asylum.”

“You’d give in first,” he said. “You’re so near, Mina. I’m merely giving you the excuse you need.”

She shook her head and pulled his hands away gently. “You wouldn’t. You couldn’t. I know you couldn’t.”

Jonathan let her go and laughed. “And that’s why you’ll fail,” he said. “You can’t see it, can you? You can’t imagine, not yet. But you’ll come back to me soon. All I have to do is wait.”

“Yes, wait,” said Mina, pulling back and hurrying out of the room. “Wait, and we’ll see which of us is right at last.”

He lay back on his bed and laughed. She had been shaking in his arms, on the verge of giving up – and yet she imagined that she might be right – that she might win?

 

In the morning, Mina walked at a brisk pace over to the asylum. Despite how awful last night had been with Jonathan, she felt much brighter in herself already. It was amazing what having a plan of action did for one, she thought. She had not felt so much herself since this terrible affair had begun.

It would have been better, however, if she didn’t need to enlist the help of Dr Seward to complete the course she had decided upon, but there was no one else she could turn to. Even if she had more friends in Whitby – or elsewhere – she knew no one else who understood the truth about Dracula other than the doctor and the Professor, and the Professor was not here. It was, though, rather a nerve to try to bite him on the previous evening and then come calling in the morning to demand his assistance.

Mrs Hopkins showed her into the drawing room and took her coat and hat and promised that though the doctor was busy, she would let him know immediately that Mrs Harker was here.

“Thank you,” said Mina and proceeded to first sit patiently, but after a few more minutes, she had to move, trying to cover her nerves, as she wandered about the room, taking note of the wallpaper, the windows – anything to keep her mind away from what Dr Seward might say when he saw her.

Luckily she had not too much longer to wait before Dr Seward appeared, striding over to her. “Mrs Harker. This is most unexpected – is something wrong? Mrs Weston – Mr Harker?”

“Nothing is wrong,” she said. “Oh, dear, well, that’s not true, but I can’t seem to explain, even when I want to. You must help me – I should like you to come with me –” She halted as his face darkened. “I promise I have the best of reasons for asking, Dr Seward, and I would not do so if it was not most urgent.” 

Dr Seward frowned at her. “Mrs Harker,” he said, lowering his voice, “your husband keeps urging me to be wary of you – and I’m beginning to wonder if he has good cause!”

“I can understand that,” said Mina, yesterday hanging heavy on her conscience. “But I think perhaps the truth is that Jonathan and I have both been wrestling with the devil and while he had the upper hand with me for a while and not with Jonathan, now it is all the other way around. Dr Seward,” she said, when he hesitated, moving towards him but stopping short of reaching out to him. She must be careful. “You will not refuse to hear my request, will you?”

He cleared his throat as he considered, but gave a nod.

“All I want is for you to accompany me to the church – this morning, if you will, as soon as you can be spared. So you see,” she finished with a quick smile, “I can hardly mean any harm, can I?”

Dr Seward gave a reluctant smile in return and motioned for her to sit again, Mina taking the couch while he sat down on the nearest chair. “Perhaps you should explain, Mrs Harker? After all, you could ask that of anyone.”

“You recall yesterday evening?” she said, watching him, though he only shifted his gaze away from her and wouldn’t answer. Mina swallowed. After last night’s dreadful altercation with Jonathan, she wondered if Dr Seward might also harbour a wish for her to complete the transformation, to give him what she’d promised. She felt sick at the idea. It would be too much to bear. “You do, don’t you? At the least, you must know something wasn’t right?”

He still wouldn’t meet her gaze. “No, no, you were unwell – not quite yourself. I won’t think – there has been no other sign, nothing –”

“Yes, there has,” said Mina, moving forward from the couch, and down onto her knees beside him in her earnestness. “I can’t – I can’t speak of it yet, but there has. I’ve been loath to believe it myself, but now I must before someone else is hurt. And I have thought and thought over everything that Professor Van Helsing told me and I’m sure I have the answer – and it lies inside the church.”

Dr Seward gave a nod, and Mina drew back onto the couch, suddenly realising what she was doing and how odd it might look if the housekeeper or one of the asylum attendants returned.

“Then you’ll come with me?”

“Give me quarter of an hour to make some rearrangements and then I shall,” he said. “Perhaps you can explain further? I’d like to know what it is I’m agreeing to.”

Mina rose as he did. “Well, you see, I can do my part – I hope – but I shall need you to distract anyone who might disturb us –”

His wariness returned. “While you will be doing what, may I ask?”

Mina shook herself. “I have the oddest feeling that it’s better if I don’t say or even think about it too much. You’ll see when we get there – it is entirely in line with the Professor’s thinking –”

“That,” said Dr Seward, “is not especially reassuring, Mrs Harker!”

Mina let herself laugh as he hastened away to find his assistant, and then guiltily decided that she had better leave it until they were at least halfway there to explain to him that it was the Catholic church she had meant. The other thing, however, she must say as soon as he returned, for if, God forbid, her plan failed, he must lock her away until the Professor could be brought back. Mina set her face, resolved upon that, terrible as it might be: if she must fall, she would take no one else with her.

 

Jonathan had been slipping into old habits, sleeping more easily in the morning than in the night and drowsing on the couch if Mina weren’t around to catch him. This morning, he didn’t wake till past ten, but when he did, it was with a suddenness that disturbed him. He sat up, feeling as if something had happened – something had changed, but he couldn’t understand what. He must go somewhere – do something. It was vital.

Mina, he thought. Where was Mina? She hadn’t been bluffing last night – she meant to do something stupidly reckless. Jonathan pulled himself out of bed and dressed hastily before heading for the door. Then he hesitated and turned back to stand before the mirror and completed his toilet with more precision. If it came down to which of them looked or sounded more plausible, he did not want to be at a disadvantage.

The compulsion that had roused him drove him out of the house, but the voice inside him didn’t seem to be able to provide him with any clear direction beyond that. On instinct, Jonathan went to the graveyard. There was only one other person there, an old man, who headed back down the steps not long after. There was no sign of Mina.

Panic filled him and he knelt down by the grave that had been the Count’s hiding place and scrabbled at the dust and dirt around it in desperation, as if reaching for any last crumb of his Master. Whatever Mina was doing, she wouldn’t take everything away from him, not now.

He filled his pockets with earth and dust and then licked his hands clean. They couldn’t steal things from inside him, he knew that, and maybe there was something of Dracula that yet remained. If there was, he would have it. It wasn’t madness, whatever they said, only that same great truth: life consuming life.

The immediate sense of panic eased and he pulled himself up to sit on the stone bench, brushing earth down from him, taking care to look perfectly composed and respectable when, without warning, pain struck him, like a knife cutting through his centre. He fell from the bench onto the grave again, gasping out. He felt for a strange, sick moment, almost as if he was two people, two utterly irreconcilable souls and he cried out.

“Mina,” he said, before collapsing onto the stone, uncaring if he let his head rest now on the stone cross. “Mina, what have you done?”

 

Mina held Dracula’s black ring in her right hand, now gloveless with her sleeve pushed back above her elbow, and hesitated in front of the font. A glance behind her told her that, regardless of his disapproval, Dr Seward was doing an admirable job of keeping the priest engaged in conversation. She drew in her breath, fearful that it might hurt, or worse, that it might not work, and then she pushed back the cover further and plunged her hand into the holy water.

At first, nothing happened and she merely felt horribly foolish, but then the water warmed around her, the ring shaking in her hand as if it might escape. She tightened her grip on it more fiercely yet. With her other hand, she gripped the edge of the font lest she give in to weakness and withdraw her arm. The water burned her now and she had to bite her tongue, fighting not to cry out. She closed her eyes, focusing on counting silently in order to endure it, but her eyes were watering from the pain. The effort of will would soon be more than she could muster, if she didn’t simply pass out. She let herself leant against the font; let gravity assist her for a moment.

Then, to her relief, she felt the ring melting against her palm and when she opened her fingers, she saw black and gold motes floating out into the water, which rapidly became cooler again. The black and gold lights disappeared, the water clear and cold, and Mina finally dared pull out her arm, red and scalded halfway up to her elbow. She would have fallen, but Dr Seward must have been keeping a watchful eye on her from where he was standing with the priest, and he was there in time to catch her, putting a hand to her upper arm with a soft sound of dismay, even as the scalding faded as if it had never been. 

Her obvious distress proved useful at least, as it distracted the priest from questions he would undoubtedly otherwise have asked as to what she had been doing, acting in such a disrespectful manner in his church. Dr Seward ushered her out into the sunlit street. Mina thought she must say something – she must replace her glove – but the world went exasperatingly foggy and distant; Dr Seward speaking far too slowly to be understood.

 

“Mrs Harker,” he was saying, moments later, having got her to a space on the waterside, crouching down beside her. “Mrs Harker, can you tell me what happened?”

She felt the world right itself again, but she still felt a little sick and heavy and weak. “Presently,” she said, and wished for something to drink – in the regular, human way. “All is well – it truly is.”

As if someone had heard her thoughts, a dock worker handed a chipped enamel mug to Dr Seward. “There,” he said. “Just like you asked. Will that do, sir?”

“Yes, thank you; that’s very kind,” said Dr Seward, taking it and carefully helping Mina to drink it until she curled her hand around the cup and took it from him. She sat up a little straighter also, the hot tea working like magic, even if it was far too strong and sweet for her liking. “You feel a little better?”

Mina felt so very much better she couldn’t begin to express it. It wasn’t the tea, of course; it was her own actions that had done it. She felt as if she was somehow filled with the sunlight, and as the faintness passed, she smiled at him, as if she couldn’t quite keep that brightness contained within her. “It worked, Dr Seward; it worked! I hardly dared let myself believe it could.”

“Can you stand?” he said, glancing over at the passers-by who were giving them curious looks. “I must get you home.”

She nodded, and let him help her up, but she was feeling stronger again by the moment. “It’s all right, Dr Seward, really it is. But, yes, I must get home. I must see Jonathan! Pray God it has worked for him, too.”

“I must see about a carriage – something,” said Dr Seward, hardly listening, focusing on the practicalities.

Mina put a hand to his arm. “No, no – I can walk. Let me try – if I feel faint again, I shall say at once, but I don’t believe I will now. It hurt so badly for a moment, that was all.”

“In that case,” said Dr Seward, “I suggest we sit on that bench for a few minutes before we make the ascent – and perhaps you could at last explain to me what this is all about?”

Mina nodded, and found that now nothing stopped her from telling him about the ring, about the last evil that had lurked inside her. She stopped short of admitting how much Jonathan too might have been affected, because she couldn’t have him taking Jonathan away from her again. With that thought, she looked at Dr Seward. “Please, let us go now. I must see Jonathan – I must see if he is also well.”

Dr Seward rose with her, but he blocked her path. “Mrs Harker,” he said, “you mustn’t – that is to say, your husband has been through too much – too great a trauma of the mind – whatever the cause, to simply be cured like that. Perhaps the, er, the creature’s influence can be removed by such remedies, but not such a malady of the mind.”

Mina nodded obediently, but she felt so sure that he must be wrong. She had won, she thought, and the sun was shining and everything would be made well again at last.

 

Jonathan had made it back to the house before Mina, still feeling sick and hollow, and angry at her for whatever it was she’d done. She had gone from him in some way, that he knew. He patted his pockets as if to reassure him that he had some traces of his Master left. He was loyal, even if she was perfidious.

The house seemed to be in some uproar, with the maid who let him in weeping into her handkerchief. He wondered for an alarmed moment if it was Mina, if that was what she had done to take herself out of his reach, but it turned out it was only Mrs Weston, who’d finally relinquished her precarious hold on life midway through a mild altercation with Mrs Perkins. Jonathan wondered why they were all making such a fuss over what everyone had known was coming for weeks.

He didn’t need to be especially alert to catch Mina when she came home. She burst in through the door to the drawing room, her face alight with her triumph, and raced across to him, skirts rustling, to throw her arms around him. “Oh, Jonathan! I have done it, and all shall be well now, you’ll see! We’re safe now, truly this time.”

Jonathan didn’t push her away as his first instinctive reaction, he held onto her, barely breathing, suddenly some part of him reawakening in a most uncomfortable way. It was not unlike that time spent in her room a couple of days ago. Here she was, Mina, whole and barely tainted at all. The painful line down the middle of him flared up again; on one side he recognised how much he might harm her to keep hold of her, on the other he railed against her treachery, her unworthiness; that she could be so favoured by the Master and yet throw it away as if it meant nothing.

He closed his eyes again, embracing her in return for what he knew must be the last time, but before he could break the moment, Mina pulled back, her eyes wide and dark with horror. She held out her hand and then staggered back further. “Oh, but Jonathan – you can’t be – you can’t –” She failed to find the words, backing up against the door, her hand going instinctively to the twin scars on her neck. “It’s only in your mind – you were never bitten – were you?”

That last honour was yet to be his, but he would have it in the end. He didn’t yet know how his path would lead there, but he knew that it would. What did it matter, he thought, if the poison was in the heart or the mind? Either way would achieve its purpose as surely.

Jonathan smiled and shrugged. “So, you finally understand. Good. Now, leave me alone!”

Mina only stared back at him, paling as much as if she had been bitten again, so he sat up and growled at her until she turned and fled, the door swinging on its hinges behind her. He was glad, he told himself, ignoring the part of him that instead insisted that his heart must break with the pain. That was only a lingering folly: it would fade and die soon enough.

 

Out in the garden, Mina walked about, heedless of the chill in the air and her lack of a coat, fighting back tears. She had done everything she could but it had not been enough. Clear of the taint herself, it was obvious to her now in Jonathan, and she shuddered. She stayed there she hardly knew how long, at a loss for what to do with herself. She had been so sure that in saving herself she would save Jonathan also.

“Miss,” said a voice and Mina turned to find Florence hurrying over towards her. She didn’t seem surprised to find Mina so upset. She merely screwed up her face in sympathy and said, “Oh, it is terrible, isn’t it, Mrs Harker?”

Upset as she was, alarm bells begin to ring in Mina’s mind. How could Florence know or understand what had distressed her? She stared back at the maid, struggling to find the courage to ask what had happened now, when she understood: Mrs Weston. That must have been why Dr Seward seemed to have vanished, and why no one had been around to take her coat. Mina stepped forward and put a hand on Florence’s shoulder. “Yes, yes, it is,” she said. “Is there something I can do?”

“Oh, no, miss,” said Florence. “Mrs Perkins is seeing to the mistress and there’s not much else any of the rest of us _can_ do, not now. The doctor wanted to see you – he wants you to go back with him. He sent Susan for your things, and now he’s ready to leave, you see.”

Mina blinked, finding herself at a loss again. “Oh, does he?” She followed Florence in bemusement, only to suddenly wonder if Dr Seward had seen the scald on her arm after all and what on earth he might make of all her very strange behaviour if he had not. Did he think she belonged in the asylum? She could hardly blame him. 

They met the doctor coming along the path towards them, and his face lightened a little in relief as soon as he saw Mina. “Mrs Harker,” he said, stepping forward. 

“Yes, I know,” she said, forgetting her fears in recognition of their shared distress, and taking his hands as he held them out to her. “Isn’t it dreadful? Poor Mrs Weston. I’m so very sorry.”

He nodded, and didn’t say that it had been inevitable, even though it had. Mina knew it wasn’t the time to mention her conversation with Mrs Weston; she couldn’t overset him further when he had to act here in his professional capacity. “I hope you won’t mind, but I think it would be best if you came home with me.”

“But there must be things to be done – I can’t desert everyone,” she said. “And then there’s Jonathan –”

Dr Seward nodded to Florence to leave them. “Yes, well, that’s the thing. Harker is adamant he won’t see you. I spoke to him and he’s calmer again – sleeping now, in fact. I thought it best to sedate him. I’d have taken him back, but I fear that would only upset him even more – understandably.”

Mina shook her head. “No, but you don’t understand. I spoke to him – I felt that – that taint all over him. It was awful. We can’t leave him unattended.”

“He isn’t unattended,” said Dr Seward. “That tall, sensible maid –”

“Susan.”

“She’s promised to send word immediately if he relapses again, but I don’t believe he will. Mrs Harker, I’ll keep a close eye on him, of course, but you’ve had a shock – I think we’ll all be able to look at everything more clearly in the morning.”

Mina nodded. The scald marks had faded so quickly, but the severity of the pain had shaken her, it was true; not to mention Jonathan’s further rejection of her, and Mrs Weston’s death. Perhaps her reaction owed more to that than to anything in Jonathan. She merely nodded, and said, “Thank you.”

 

Once they arrived at the asylum, Dr Seward ushered her into the drawing room and sat her down on the couch, calling for Mrs Hopkins to bring some tea, before taking another look at Mina and, evidently he didn’t like what he saw, for he felt the need to fetch her a brandy.

Mina would have objected, but she was shaken enough to find his concerned attentions more welcome than she cared to admit. She also thought that it gave him something he could do, and it would be unkind to rob him of that unnecessarily. She took the glass he gave her, and tried to think what to say to express her sympathy, but failed. She took a sip of the brandy and pulled a face at its taste, but it did help to drive away the residual coldness.

“I thought I’d won,” she said at last, letting weariness settle over her. “I was so sure I had.”

Dr Seward hesitated, and then sat down beside her. “I don’t pretend to know much about all these superstitions, but I think you refine too much on your husband’s reaction. He has been making good progress, but it’s inevitable that if he is upset or disturbed as he was today –”

“Yes,” Mina said, and sighed. She wasn’t so sure herself that there was anything more to Jonathan’s behaviour than merely her expecting a miracle cure for madness that did not exist. She put down the glass and put her hand to her mouth, no longer able to entirely hold back her tears. She had saved herself, she thought, and she had saved everyone around her – Dr Seward and Florence first amongst them – but it seemed that nobody could save Jonathan. 

Dr Seward shifted nearer and gave her an awkward pat on the shoulder. Mina caught hold of him by the lapel of his jacket and pressed her face in against him, as if to hide the tears she struggled to stifle. She felt him tense in response, then he put his arm around her, half leaning against her in their shared grief. Mina knew that he had helped to save Jonathan and her, but not Lucy; neither could he save Mrs Weston. Mina breathed out, and cautiously put her hand to his arm, and then shifted it down to take his hand for a moment. This was her victory, then: she was human, even if it hurt, and she could at last give and accept such small comfort without risk of harming anyone.

She pulled back before Mrs Hopkins could return with the tea and be shocked at their apparent impropriety. If Mrs Hopkins was ever shocked at anything, working in an asylum, Mina thought, something of her sense of humour reviving, even as she wiped her eyes and reached for handkerchief.

“No doubt I _am_ refining too much on Jonathan’s behaviour,” she said to Dr Seward, as he coughed and stood. “But I do think, no matter how inconvenient it is, we must write to the Professor. I can’t be easy in my mind until I know what he thinks. He has left you an address?”

Dr Seward turned and gave a slight smile. “Yes, he left his direction, although I can’t guarantee that he won’t get side-tracked even before he reaches Professor Reizler. But,” he added, looking a little sheepish, “you needn’t worry about that. What with one thing and another, I wrote to him two days ago.”

Mina laughed and blinked back more tears, even as Mrs Hopkins made her return with the tea tray, pouring out a drink with wordless and comfortable efficiency while Dr Seward excused himself, being, he said, behindhand with at least half a dozen more mundane matters by now. 

It was all so very ordinary and human, and for that at least, Mina decided, she could be grateful.


	5. Countdown (my wrath did grow)

_All Jonathan had to do was wait. First, for Mina to leave – she who was his greatest threat. She did so after the latest funeral, calling to say goodbye. Jonathan remained calm and kept his distance._

_She was going home, she had told him, and hoped he would rejoin her soon, that it shouldn’t be too long before he was able, and Jonathan agreed, even though he knew that would never happen. She then prolonged the meeting by telling him (as he already knew) that he need not worry about leaving, since Mrs Weston had, in the event of Lucy’s predeceasing her, left the house and almost everything else to Dr Seward, and the doctor was willing to have Jonathan there as tenant for the time being; some sort of nominal payment would be arranged._

_“But it won’t be for long,” Mina said, reaching out for Jonathan’s hand and trying to hide her hurt when he snatched it away. Jonathan wondered if she was trying to fool herself with that, or if she was foolish enough to believe it. “And I shall come back –”_

_Jonathan withdrew still further. “When I’m ready. It seems, for the moment, we have an evil effect on one another.” He managed to remember to soften it; that it distressed her as it did not him. “I am sorry, Mina.”_

_“Oh, yes, of course,” she said, looking down in shame. “And it is so much worse for you, I know. But you will get well, Jonathan. You are so much stronger already. It won’t be long.”_

_Jonathan waited, on edge for the other danger to pass, but it didn’t take Van Helsing too much longer to resume his journey to Vienna to see Professor Reizler and share their findings. Let him chase ghosts across Europe; anywhere but here._

_The house closed up around him: Mrs Perkins dismissed all but Florence and shut up most of the rooms, leaving one or two for Jonathan’s use, and then they left, replaced by a busy daily, who cleaned what was needed and cooked a hot meal in the evenings and otherwise bothered Jonathan not at all._

_Seward stayed and visited regularly, but Jonathan easily satisfied him with rational answers to questions, with steady progress – save on the subject of Mina. It left Jonathan free to bury his treasure of dirt in the back garden. That inner voice prompted him to it and, in time, the oddest black sapling sprouted. It thrived, but plants too near it seemed to shrivel and die. Jonathan saw in it confirmation of his faith and tended it carefully, watering it on its first appearance with his blood._

_Eventually, even Seward left. There were too many bad memories in Whitby for him and, he said, a friend had been asking him to join him at his more experimental asylum somewhere south of York, and he’d finally given in. He promised first that Jonathan might stay as long as he needed and that he would visit as often as he could._

_“Will you still not see your wife?” the doctor asked, having one last try before he left. He hadn’t asked often since, not wishing to agitate Jonathan when he otherwise did so well. “Surely, if she only came to visit you briefly – that could do you no harm?”_

_Jonathan looked across at him. “I won’t. I can’t have her here – she brings it all back as nothing else does. And I’ve told you before, doctor, better for her to be safe, busy, living her life than locked up here with me. She’s returned to her teaching and takes in pupils, I hear?”_

_“She does,” said Seward, although he clearly had to bite down on further argument, before nodding and rising to his feet. “I daresay you are right. In any case, I have spoken to my assistant – you will continue to receive visits –”_

_Jonathan gave a slight smile. “Dr Seward, you are too kind.”_

_All Jonathan had to do was wait._

 

Jonathan had written, as he did periodically – always short, stilted letters, as one getting an unwanted duty done. Mina could never open one without painfully missing all the old ease of correspondence between them, the affectionate terms and the jokes, the way that no detail was too small to share. She hesitated over this one, but made herself read it, just as no doubt he had made himself write it. To her dismay, she found herself this time in receipt of careful, hurtful lists of business arrangements Jonathan had made, ostensibly for her sake – the sale of the house (it had been rented out, allowing her to live here in London where more pupils were to be had), an allowance for her – 

Mina stopped and put down the sheets of paper, barely taking it in. It made everything sound so horribly final when she had been yet hoping even after months had turned to years that they could return to one another. 

Mina felt her carefully constructed life threaten to shatter again. It was still, despite her best efforts, so very thin and easy to break. However, other letters had come with the morning post, including the payment of a bill – and a most intriguing and unexpected letter from Dr Seward.

 

“Mrs Harker,” the doctor said, meeting her at the station at Beverley, grasping her hands in greeting, before ushering her towards the entrance; away from the smoke and the small crowd that clustered round the platform. “I hope you didn’t think me impertinent, but, as I explained in my letter –”

Mina smiled and patted his arm. “Yes, of course. It was perfectly logical, Dr Seward. You believe your latest patient is in fact not mad but has seen something unnatural. And where she will not tell you, you hope she may tell a fellow female – which makes me your only possible choice. There, you see, I have understood, have I not?”

“Something along those lines, yes,” said Dr Seward. “Mrs Heywood was sent to us, with reports that she had grown quite wild and had spoken of impossible happenings, alarming her more superstitious neighbours, but since she arrived, she has been silent on that subject and as rational as you or I – although that is, of course, not always easy to judge.”

“Poor soul. I shall certainly do everything I can to help her.”

Dr Seward smiled. “Indeed. And I must say I’m pleased to see you so much your old self again, Mrs Harker.”

She only smiled in return and did not say that she was not and could never be that, not while Jonathan remained lost to her. 

 

So it was that Mina met Alice Heywood, and persuaded her to confide in her of the strange sight she had seen in the graveyard (a man, she said, impossibly animating a corpse, if only briefly). Mina, before trying to tell Dr Seward, went to the offices of the local newspaper, reading through the past few months until her head and eyes ached at the dense columns of print, but came away with two similar stories to present to the doctor. For once, his prosaic solution was enough, as the villain in question, however keen he might to practise the dark arts, was not immortal or immune to being arrested by the local police force. It was all concluded satisfactorily, as far as Dr Seward was concerned, but it had given Mina cause for thought. How many others might there be such as Alice Heywood? Who would help them?

Mina returned home, taking Alice with her as housekeeper (where she could make a fresh start) and pored over her daily newspaper for other such reports. Many of them, on writing to persons involved, turned out to be mere nonsense invented by the press, but not all of them, and those Mina investigated by any methods in her power. 

She felt sometimes, since she’d destroyed that dark ring and left Jonathan behind that, along with the evil, she had burned away some other more vital part of her, but at least now she had a purpose.

 

_All Jonathan had to do was wait. In the garden, the unlovely tree grew, although it never reached any great height, strangely at odds with the life and greenery of the rest of the place._

_When Seward or the Van Helsing returned, it was easy to assuage any doubts they might have. Jonathan met them in sunlight, and answered all their questions with perfect calm; he took any test they might set him. He spoke of arrangements he had been making to resume work and how well it had been going, and then he insisted that as yet he could not leave here, nor could he see Mina again._

 

“Dr Seward,” Mina said, kneeling beside his prone form in the hallway. “Oh, dear. I am sorry! You called at quite the wrong moment, it seems, but do not be alarmed.”

He tried to sit and she hastened to help him, putting a steadying hand to his shoulder. “What the devil was that?”

“Oh, dear,” said Mina again, and assisted him to stand before ushering him into the drawing room where she fetched him a brandy. “I do not think it means harm – it seems to be some lost soul that has been following Miss Jessop around of late, and, of course, such a state of affairs cannot be allowed to continue. She says it is most inconvenient. It can only be seen by few, however. I would not have thought that you should be one.”

He gave her a glare. “Would to God I was not. Am I supposed now to believe in ghosts?”

“I don’t know,” said Mina. “I have been thinking – if such creatures as the Count exist, capable of corrupting and damning souls, perhaps sometimes such souls may slip their net and that might explain such phenomena? I do not know precisely how that might be, however. I must write to the Professor again, although he does scold a great deal before he will answer my questions.”

“Hmph,” he said, evidently recovering enough to feel obliged to at least attempt a polite response.

“I _am_ sorry, believe me. If you had only come in another few days, we might have been free of it, as we intend to hold a séance –”

Dr Seward choked over his brandy. “Mrs Harker!”

“Oh, I know,” said Mina. “I do not mean to conduct it myself, you understand, but what else can we do? We must find out what the poor thing wants and how Miss Jessop may be rid of it. It cannot follow her around all her days.”

Dr Seward put down his glass. “Yes, well, I have no right to interfere with your affairs, Mrs Harker, although grant me leave to say I’m not sure which of you is worse of late – you or the Professor.”

“I only tackle very small problems,” said Mina and tried another smile to pacify him and watched him unbend a little further. “And besides, I think you understand that if I have the means to help – means few others have – I feel I am obligated.” 

Dr Seward shook his head. “That is an admirable sentiment, Mrs Harker, but I cannot think your present course wise.”

“But I daresay you came to bring me news of Jonathan – please do tell me how he is.”

He sighed. “There is very little to tell. I saw him a few days ago and since I was in town I thought I should call and let you know. He does well – is working again, at least to some extent, but he remains unmoved on the subject of you, I’m afraid.”

“Yes,” said Mina, a shadow falling over her face. “Unmoved, indeed. I do not think he cares at all.”

Dr Seward forgot the ghost and leant forward. “Mrs Harker, I’m sure that’s not true. I suspect he says little on the matter only because he _does_ care.”

“I hope you are right.”

He watched her, and then said, with a cough, shifting himself in the chair, “And since I am here, you may as well explain to me this preposterous tale of a haunted young lady, and if I can help, I will, although I make no promises. Are you sure this Miss Jessop isn’t playing you some trick?”

“If so,” said Mina, unable to keep back an impish smile, “it worked beautifully on _you_ , Dr Seward.”

 

_All Jonathan had to do was wait, sure in the knowledge that what he wanted was on its way. He had no need to worry; he only had to maintain this masquerade for long enough and he would finally be transformed._

_The tree in the garden flourished like a guilty secret. From time to time, on moonlit nights, he caressed its branches, kissed its leaves, gave it his blood, and in summer even slept beside it. He didn’t know how this could work, but he knew that it would, in time, and time meant nothing now. Time was only ticking on until he could break free from his shackles of mortality._

_Alone, Jonathan laughed to himself and if he thought of Mina, he pitied her._

 

Mina had never felt so ill. All her strength had gone, eaten away by the infection, but even so she could barely sleep, unable to feel comfortable. She felt too hot, then too cold – she heard her heart beating erratically. She alternated between a nightmarish reality and a recurring dream of old that returned with more persistence than ever: she was buried under the earth and she was cold, so very cold, she would never be warm again. She shivered, semi-waking in horror and distress.

“Mrs Harker,” said a voice beside her. It sounded like Dr Seward but it could not be. He was in Amsterdam, with the Professor, so it must be her fevered mind producing phantoms. Resolutely, she ignored it.

“Mrs Harker,” the voice said again, seemingly not about to go away. “ _Mina_. Can you understand me? The Professor sent me back – with this.”

Mina made herself turn in her bed to face him. He was no phantom, if looking a little more worn and ruffled than usual. His suit was rumpled and there was a smut of soot on his white collar, no doubt from the train. He gave her an encouraging smile nevertheless. Mina’s gaze passed to the small bottle he was holding out towards her. The liquid inside seemed to be a particularly vile grey-green colour, but she knew what it must be regardless: it was hope.

“He wouldn’t explain to me what it is,” said Dr Seward. “Which I must say, hardly fills me with confidence. He seemed to expect that you would understand, however. I hope that is the case, or I hardly know how to proceed.”

Mina managed to nod. “He sent me – a letter. It’s – there – somewhere.” She moved a weak hand on her pillow, gesturing vaguely towards the bedside table. “Please.” She tried to sit, and he helped her, propping her up against the pillows, then poured some of the liquid into a small glass and held it to her lips.

It tasted as vile as it looked, but then that was the way of any good medicine, Mina knew. She swallowed it as best as she could, and then gradually subsided into a more restful slumber. When she did wake again, it was to Dr Seward muttering about her recklessness as he tended to the bite on her arm that had caused the trouble. It was oddly comforting, she found, as she drifted back to sleep. 

 

When she woke again the next morning, feeling weak and washed out but considerably more herself, Dr Seward was dozing in the chair beside her. She pulled herself up carefully, hoping not to wake him, but he stirred immediately, giving her a quick examination before calling for Alice. He then left Mina to her housekeeper’s ministrations, to be washed and fed on beef tea and suchlike, and didn’t return until she’d slept again – and so, Mina hoped, had he. He did look a little fresher, if not quite as starched as usual.

He checked her dressing again and then could not seem to hold back from scolding. “What were you thinking? This – this – it’s the outside of enough! I was supposed to be taking a long-planned holiday, and what happens? For all the Professor’s assurances that his current researches are entirely theoretical, and he is far too old to be chasing monsters, I find him up to the neck in – well, that’s another story, and thankfully fairly amusing for once.” He threw up his hands. “Nevertheless, I had to patch him up once more – barely hours before your telegram arrives and I am despatched back again with God only knows what sort of potion that I must take the Professor’s word for is not rank poison, though it certainly smells like it –”

Mina blinked back tears at his exasperated tirade, too exhausted to laugh or argue. “I am grateful, I promise. So, I’m sure, is the Professor.”

“Hmph,” said Dr Seward, but he lost hold of his anger, deflating slightly. “Forgive me. I’m a brute. Now is not the time to scold you. But when the Professor gave that to me and would not explain – my thoughts – well, I hardly knew what to think.”

Mina reached out a hand and he took it. “No, no,” she murmured. “I know why. There’s a letter, you’ll see. It was only that the moss had to be collected at a particular time and manner and he thought –”

“And no doubt arcane rituals muttered over it?” said Dr Seward. “Oh, yes, I see.” He paused, but kept hold of her hand. “What I cannot be silent at, however, is your continued carelessness. This is not the first occasion this year that I have been obliged to call on you to treat an injury you could not explain to another doctor. You are not taking enough care for your safety – either in body or soul.”

She shook her head, closing her eyes. “It was an accident. The creature was so small, I underestimated the danger –”

“Not consciously, perhaps,” said Dr Seward. “But subconsciously – I do wonder. Your husband –”

“I dream sometimes,” she said, weak enough to say it. “I dream of being underground and cold and when the dream continues, when I don’t wake at once as I usually do, I feel quite sure it is not me lying there, but Jonathan.”

“I’ll see him again soon,” said Dr Seward, his thin face creasing in concern. “In the meantime, Mrs Harker, you must bear in mind that you have a house full of people who care about you and take no unwise risks. Before I leave, you must solemnly promise me that you will be more careful.” He hesitated, on the point of rising from the chair. “One thing I suppose I must ask: this creature, whatever it is – it is not still at large, is it?”

Mina shook her head, and couldn’t entirely keep back a smile. “No,” she said in watery triumph. “I won.”

 

_The waiting was almost at an end. Jonathan merely had to sit patiently through one more tedious visit from Dr Seward. The doctor had to go away – there was some trouble with the Professor, maybe he had even died at last – but Seward must first conscientiously travel back to Whitby to ensure that Jonathan was well before he left, damn him. Worse still, he was more insistent than ever that Jonathan should see Mina._

_“I can’t see that it could truly be any risk now,” said Seward, leaning forward, all in earnest, as if these things mattered. Perhaps he thought they did. “A few minutes – I can be present if you would rather. For her sake, Harker. I think she needs at least to understand why if nothing more. When I return –”_

_Jonathan smiled, the slight tension he’d felt at this unaccustomed demand of the doctor’s easing immediately. “Of course,” he said, perfectly reasonable himself now. “No doubt you are right, doctor. When you return, yes. Bring Mina and let us say our farewells.”_

_“Thank you,” said Seward, leaning back, clearly much relieved. He rose. “It’s the right thing to do – I feel sure you will understand when you see her.”_

_Jonathan only smiled again, and lied, and lied. “Good luck with your journey, doctor. I hope it isn’t as long as you fear.”_

_It grew even easier now. Jonathan went back out into the garden and sat down by the tree. It continued growing; dark brown, stunted and leafless. He slept there again that night and dreamt his Master came to him, picked him up and at last favoured him with that boon he had been craving for so very long. When he awoke again, the tree had its branches wrapped around him, marks on his neck as if thorns had pressed into him there, thorns he could not see yet. And the surety of knowledge of what he must do next grew ever stronger in him._

_He paid the funeral director’s assistant well and made arrangements for his own demise. He died – or thought he died – besides the tree in the garden, his heart giving out at last under all he had suffered. Then he let the money he had paid speak for him: he was buried in the garden in the grave he’d dug with the last of his strength, even as a pauper was taken in his place to be burned in Hull._

_When Jonathan emerged again from the earth, he had no idea how much time had passed, nor whether or not he was dead. He supposed he must be, but he had never felt more alive and the issue seemed suddenly immensely trivial. He was weak yet, however: desperately hungry, and waiting, still waiting, but he sensed new fire in his veins; he felt the power rising in him._

_When his unlikely and unwary angel stepped into the garden at twilight, Jonathan knew at last that the waiting was over. He should have drawn Gabriel Simmons in more slowly, but once he had finally begun feeding, he couldn’t stop. He was a ravening beast permitted at last to gorge himself on life, on blood._

_Blood is life, he thought again, and in his euphoria, he understood everything. The waiting was over._

 

Mina opened the door to admit an unexpected visitor as the rain poured down onto the cobbles and pavement in the dark. Dr Seward was standing there on the doorstep, hunched into his coat, looking thinner and more worn than ever.

“Good heavens!” she said, opening the door wider and ushering him in, calling as she did so for Alice to fetch them hot tea. “Dr Seward. I hadn’t realised you had returned – though I am very glad to see you.”

He managed a smile and followed her in, letting Alice take his drenched overcoat and dripping hat. “I did write, but I see my letter must have gone astray. I’m so sorry, Mrs Harker – about your husband, I should say.”

“It was hardly your fault,” she said. “After all, what else could you do but try to find the Professor? And even had you been here, the doctor told me it was his heart. What could anyone do? But the Professor – it is as you feared – he is dead?”

Dr Seward nodded, letting her guide him to a chair. “Yes. Nevertheless, I am sorry. I went back there before I came to see you. I asked around, but it all seemed in order.”

“You heard it also,” said Mina. “That young man who disappeared. I have kept a close eye on the newspapers, but there has been no whisper of any other such incidents since.”

He nodded. “Yes. Seems the poor fellow must have been on the point of nervous exhaustion. Telephoned his office about a ghost and then ran off. I talked to the doctor who saw Harker; I made enquiries with the undertaker, the newspaper offices, the police – I even called at the house, but there’s a family there now, living as happily as you please, and all these odd stories now seem entirely forgotten. And Harker was one step ahead of us – arranged to be cremated. I’m no expert, like the Professor, but I believe that should suffice to ensure that he cannot become – one of those creatures.”

“Yes,” said Mina. “It’s over.” 

Why did it still not feel as if it was? She supposed it must be because she had never been allowed to see Jonathan again. She had gone to Whitby after his death, but it had not brought her the closure she had been seeking. She had wanted to speak to him again – to know that he was well. She sighed. “But what about Professor Van Helsing?”

Dr Seward put his hand to his head. “I found his resting place in the end – after a sort of Grand Tour around some of the strangest corners of Europe. He had been somewhat cryptic in his last letters, and my only avenue was to find this Professor Reizler fellow, and after missing him at various places, we eventually met in Vienna. He wasn’t entirely sure where Van Helsing had gone either, but in the end, I tracked him down to a remote corner of Norway. I believe he had gone there in search of something related to your last case, but he had been wounded. I followed out his instructions should such a situation arise, though there was no need. I think the kindly souls who had nursed him and seen to his burial thought I was some agent of the devil, but he was most insistent that I should be absolutely certain –”

Mina leant over to put her hand on his. “Yes, and you did what he asked. He would have been glad to know it.”

“Anyway, as you say,” said Dr Seward, gently shaking her off. “It’s over at last.”

Mina nodded and agreed, but no matter what she said or did, some deep-hidden part of her was still waiting. For what, she could not have said.


	6. Fields of Blood

Mina had been unsure precisely where she was being taken or why. She had been sent for by someone impressively high up in the military and, failing to imagine that any hospital even on the Front could be so desperately in need of an administrator that someone should whisk her away there, she assumed it must have something to do with her pre-war activities. She couldn’t help feeling increasingly anxious at what terror she might encounter at the end of her journey.

It was therefore a relief to find, when she was ushered into the quarantine hut in the Field Hospital, that what was awaiting her there was nothing more alarming than Dr Seward.

“Mrs Harker,” he said, turning. “They _did_ bring you, after all – I was hoping they would not. I never meant to say that they should, although to be honest, that morning I was so distracted I hardly know what I said –”

She had to laugh. “That is hardly a friendly greeting. I am very happy to see you again, no matter what the circumstances. It has been much too long.” She glanced over him as she spoke. He had not changed very much, although his hair was whiter than it should have been. She held out her hands to him, and he took hold of them. When he released her, she stretched up and kissed his cheek before drawing back.

“Yes, I’m sorry,” he said. “But I would rather not have you here. It was unforgivable of me to ask. However, you will see why –” He led her over to two beds, both occupied, and directed her attention to the nearest man’s neck, moving his head gently so that she might see the bite marks.

Mina took an involuntary step back, her gloved fingers going without thought to the long-healed wound on her own neck. She had seen any number of things in these years since she had met Dracula, but no other vampires. “Oh, no, _no_ ,” she said, and looked up at Dr Seward. “How did you find this out? I thought you were also in England, helping those poor men wounded in their minds, not out here.”

“I was,” he said, guiding her away from the two unconscious victims. “Then I received a patient whose source of trouble seemed to be not so much the war but a monster of some kind – a dark angel whom he had seen sink teeth into his fellow’s neck and lure him away. Naturally, I wrote to the Field Hospital and to his commanding officer to discover more. I got little out of the former, but Captain Lincoln came to see me on leave. Several of his men had told similar tales; a few others had succumbed to a wasting disease none of the doctors knew how to combat, and he was greatly worried by it. Others had also vanished, but that of course, could be due to all too common reasons. He said that even a German soldier some of his men had captured out in No Man’s Land had all but thrown himself into their hands, begging them not to let the monster seize him. 

“I didn’t know what to tell the Captain, save that it sounded like an ailment I had come across before. I believe he must have written to someone with considerable influence in High Command. He was killed soon after, poor fellow, but I was sent out here to investigate, along with Major Graham, who brought you here. I’m not entirely sure of his credentials – I believe he may even be part of some sort of Intelligence outfit. Officially, I am to deal with any such cases as these, but of course, it’s almost impossible. I have no one to help who understands what the problem truly is – and they already think me mad enough for some of my orders. Besides, whenever there is another push, official purpose must be abandoned – every last ounce of help is needed. I wonder, in the face of all the other casualties, if we can truly worry about one more or less falling victim to such a curse, at least until this is over.”

Mina sat down on a wooden chair beside an empty bed. “You don’t mean that.”

“No,” he said, putting a hand to his forehead in a gesture of weariness. “No, I expect I don’t. In any case, by the time I was summoned to give a report, I was rather at my wits’ end, and it was then that I mentioned your name – which is how we both come to be here.”

“What are we to do?” she said, and got up again, walking back over to the two men, scanning their sleeping forms.

“Private Venn, Somerset Light Infantry,” said Dr Seward, sounding tired and flat. “Not much over eighteen, I believe. The other is Sergeant Robertson of the Durham Light Infantry, thirty-three or thereabouts.”

Mina glanced up at him. “I’m not a reporter.” She couldn’t keep from touching Venn’s neck and even with her gloves on, she shivered, sensing something horribly familiar.

“No, of course not.” Dr Seward stopped on the point of saying something else, and instead gave an exclamation of annoyance. “That damned fellow has removed half the crosses again – forgive me, Mrs Harker.”

“What fellow?”

He ran a hand through his head. “The chaplain. He keeps complaining about me. He thinks I’m some sort of fanatical high churchman, for which I suppose I cannot blame him. Every so often, he removes the articles he finds particularly offensive, which is not in the least helpful. I can’t help wishing this vampire would bite him, rather than one of these poor wretches.”

“Oh, dear,” said Mina, and put up a hand to her mouth, unable to keep back laughter at the idea.

Dr Seward threw her a wry look. “Yes, yes, it’s amusing enough until the fifth time, or he complains to the CO that I must be as mad as my patients and unfit for duty.”

“Well,” said Mina, “first things first. Perhaps I should speak to Major Graham again? If he is what you suspect, then surely he will have been gathering information about the attacks. If we can pinpoint a centre of activity, that will help us track down this monster to its lair. And we do have these two poor men, do we not? That was how you and the Professor found the Count, I believe?”

Dr Seward gave a reluctant nod. 

“Now, what shall we need? Crosses, naturally; holy water – and I always keep some at hand – and we can make stakes if necessary, I think. Or perhaps we could use spare tent pegs, if there are some?”

“Mrs Harker, I do not think you understand – how can you be so calm at the notion?”

Mina frowned over the question. “I believe,” she said, “it is only because if I don’t think of action, of a plan, I shall never be calm again.”

She moved nearer to him, about to ask where Major Graham might be found, when they both turned at a slight, soft noise from behind them.

Mina caught hold of Dr Seward in instinctive alarm; he gripped her arm in response as they watched a young man in civilian clothes bending over Private Venn. Neither of them could move or speak for a moment in shock. Mina felt a growing sense of unease; the feeling of something dark that she recognised and could not yet put a name to. When Dr Seward made a slight, distressed sound and tugged at her arm, causing her to turn the other way, she could not feel truly surprised to see Jonathan standing there.

The sight still hit her like a physical blow, however. She might have fallen if Dr Seward had not been holding onto her. “Jonathan,” she said at last. “ _Jonathan._ ”

“It has been far too long, hasn’t it?” he said, smiling at them both. “And I see that you have met Gabriel – the very first of my angels. I believe I owe you for him, Dr Seward. Tonight, you must allow me demonstrate my gratitude.”

Mina edged forward, half in front of the doctor, her face setting in lines of determination. “Jonathan, don’t you dare.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” he said, casting a glance towards her. “Of course. I should let Gabriel make his own thanks.”

Dr Seward swung round, looking from one to the other. “I don’t understand. Harker –” And then he turned his head again. “He’s the fellow who disappeared – the property agent?”

“How could I resist?” said Jonathan, holding out his hands.

Dr Seward took a step back and then halted, finding himself getting too close to Gabriel. “Good God!”

“No, no, doctor,” Jonathan said. “God is _not_ good; I think we have all learned that. I, however, am far more merciful. Gabriel will show you exactly how much so.”

Seward turned to face the younger vampire, backing away across the room. Mina heard a shout and the sound of one of the beds crashing over, but she couldn’t do anything to help, since Jonathan strode towards her at the same moment. She put her hand to the gold cross on its chain around her neck and raised her head, facing him. “And what of me?”

“Once,” said Jonathan, circling her, “I remember, in that other life, thinking to save you by driving you away from me. I cannot remember why; what illogic moved me. It was needless cruelty. And even though you rejected the honour once before, I shall still save you, Mina.”

Mina pulled the chain free and held the cross up to his face, summoning every ounce of resolution in her. It was no angel that shrank back from it, hissing and cursing, but only a devil.

“I made that choice a long time ago,” she said. “I have not changed my mind – and I shall be the one to save you, that I do promise. Now, in the name of God, _go_!”

Jonathan moved further back. “Oh, I’ll go,” he said, “I see there is no profit to be had here, tonight. But it’ll do no good in the end. You’ll see. Those two are mine and you cannot keep them from me. As for you, if you want to stay here in this morass of cruelty and madness that you call life, do as you will, Mina!”

He vanished, and Mina swung around instantly. Gabriel had also disappeared, but so had Dr Seward. Mina hurried forward, forgetting all else in her fear, looking over the fallen bed and praying desperately that the vampire had not hurt him. She had borne a great deal, but she was not sure she could contend with losing Dr Seward to the monster.

“Dr Seward,” she called and then gathered her wits enough to see that he was kneeling over the unfortunate Private Venn, who had been thrown out of the bed when it had fallen. “John, are you unharmed?”

He glanced up, giving a nod. “Yes, but I must have help for this poor fellow. I fear he won’t last much longer. Please, see if you can find someone.”

Mina bit her lip, unsteady for a moment in her relief. “But you _are_ unhurt?”

“I promised the Professor I’d carry that dratted cross about and so I do, especially here,” said Dr Seward, nodding at it where it was lying on the floorboards beside him. “And even that wretched chaplain stops short of taking things out of my pockets.”

Mina found she could not only breathe again, but even laugh, and she drew back, hastening towards the corridor, only to be brought up short by Major Graham arriving in the doorway. He looked so pale, she wondered in alarm if he had been bitten.

“Mrs Harker,” he said, sounding dazed. “Seward.”

Dr Seward stood. “Ah, Graham. Will you give me a hand with righting poor Venn here?”

Graham obliged, but after that was done, looked from one to the other. “I was outside – I heard – I saw –” He stopped and glanced down at his hand, as if surprised to see that he was trembling. He shook his head. “Even the memory of it – I would have tried to help you, but I was overwhelmed by a sense of horror, like nothing I have ever known. My legs gave way. I must apologise, Seward – I honestly had begun to think you were deranged or a crank bent on proving some nonsensical theory.”

“Perfectly understandable,” said Dr Seward. He gave a cough. “However, you say you were overwhelmed – if you don’t mind, I had better check they didn’t harm you.” He took a step forward.

Graham glanced at Mina as if for reassurance. “What do you mean?”

“If the creature attacked you,” said Mina, “there will be a mark, as there is on these two poor men.” She put a hand to her neck again. Her wound had faded too much to be seen, even under the most careful inspection in the mirror, but she felt it pain her as it had not for many years, and she shivered.

Graham blinked. “Oh, er, I see.” He pulled down the collar of his uniform and craned his neck away from Dr Seward. “Am I clear?”

“You are,” said Dr Seward, giving him a cursory examination. “Besides, were you not, you would not have been so willing to let me look.” He put a hand to his head. “The question remains – what do we do? We have little time to save these men, and I do not believe Harker will rest until he has carried out his threats towards us – you in particular, Mrs Harker.”

Mina looked to Graham. “Do you have maps, Major? I daresay you have been trying to make out a pattern for the spread of the infection. If so, it will be vital.”

“He could be anywhere,” said Dr Seward. “Even if we can pick out a general area, it will be too large for us to find him in time.”

Mina shook her head. “No, not anywhere. I do not believe he could hide in the trenches, nor out in No Man’s Land. It would be too dangerous, even for him. Perhaps a bullet or bayonet wound might not kill him, nor even a mine, but even if not fatal, it would certainly be inconvenient. And he must have somewhere to hide until nightfall – and the countryside around here is very open. Please, Major, if you have any maps, fetch them at once.”

“I can see now why the doctor asked for you,” said Graham, with a curt nod and brief grin. “I won’t be a moment.”

Dr Seward called him back, hunting one of the confiscated crosses out of the drawer of a nearby cabinet. “You had best take this. It is one of the few sure means of protection.”

Mina watched the young major run out of the hut, and then looked back at Dr Seward.

“Mrs Harker,” he said. “I hardly know what to say. If I had the least idea who was behind this, I would never have asked for you. It was unforgivable as it was, doubly so now.”

She shook her head, and moved forward, stretching out her hand to him. “I needed to know – to see him. Oh, but how can this be? We both made enquiries after his death – how can he yet be here, like this?”

“My thoughts exactly,” he said. “I don’t know. It is all my fault. I should have known – should have seen something. He seemed so well, Mrs Harker, I assure you. He passed every test the Professor could conceive, answered every question of my own. And yet we must have missed some vital sign – we failed.”

Mina tightened her hold on his arm. “Dr Seward, this will accomplish nothing. We must merely continue as we planned and find him, and lay him at last to rest.” She had to remove her hand, putting it to her mouth, suddenly close to tears. Then she swallowed and lifted her head again. “There is one more thing, I must ask, however. If – if Jonathan wins – if he does somehow succeed in turning me, you will do for me what you and the Professor did for Lucy, will you not?”

To her surprise, he did not agree. Instead, he pulled back from her. “Good God, Mrs Harker,” he said. “You try my patience too far! Since this began, I have seen Lucy become a monster; I watched while the Professor drove a stake through her heart – she cried out as he did so, did you know? I have witnessed your husband unable to fully reclaim his life despite all our best efforts, I have treated you and others with wretched folk remedies, and, what is more, I spent months hunting around the most God-forsaken corners of this continent only to dig up the rotting corpse of the Professor – my teacher, my friend – because he asked me to and now this! Well, no, I will not! You shall have to remain alive, that is all there is to it!”

“Oh,” said Mina, too startled to say anything more.

He put a hand to his head. “You must forgive me,” he said in a quieter tone, his outburst of temper over already. “It has been a trying time – but I should not visit it upon you –”

“No, no,” said Mina, this time reaching for his hand. “You are right. It’s strange; I thought something almost the same about you only a few moments ago. We shall _both_ have to remain alive.”

He gave a smile, closing his eyes briefly. “And if we do not, then I shall try to do as you ask, but I’m not entirely sure I have it in me. I am not the Professor.”

“No,” she agreed. “I’m not sure I am, either. And there is another reason why you must remain alive – the world needs nothing so much as its doctors at this present time.”

Dr Seward laughed then. “Very well, that is decided, but what do we do about it?”

“What we planned,” she said. “We shall examine the maps, and then use one of these poor men to lead us to Jonathan’s hiding place – and wait for him and his fellow creatures to return.”

He shook his head. “Ah, yes, and what then? Can we hold out against them? Destroy them?”

“Yes,” said Mina, even though inwardly she was not half so certain. “I did not save Jonathan before, but I will now.” She caught Dr Seward looking at her oddly. Frowning, she said, “What is it?”

He gave a shrug. “It’s only – that’s what he said about you.”

“Well,” said Mina more honestly, giving a tremulous smile, “we shall try. With all our hearts, we shall try.”

 

Jonathan had known that Mina must come; he felt it. She must be drawn – it must be still there within her. However, even if not, even if she had the strength to fight, he knew he could easily overwhelm her. He remained hidden behind the few walls that remained in this village, shrouded by fog – waiting.

He could see them. He had at first been unable to resist going back to the hut, to find her, but now he had returned, he found them already here, trying to trap him. He had been living in a village the war had reduced to a ghost of its former self, in an abandoned cellar. They had found that; well, they were not entirely stupid. He wondered how much sooner they had got here – enough time to render his hiding place barred to him or not?

It did not matter, however. He would find somewhere to go if it came to that – this whole stretch of land was a graveyard now; all of it his. As if in some effort to illustrate his belief in the pointlessness and cruelty of what humanity called life, they had been fighting over it for months. There was not even anything remarkable about it, that thousands should die for this small hill or the next.

Once Gabriel and the others had returned from feeding, encircling the three foolish humans in their hiding place, Jonathan stepped out of the shadows and called for Mina, tendrils of the fog reaching out for her.

She looked up from where she was sitting, bundled up next to Dr Seward and a younger man, one Jonathan didn’t yet know nor care about. Then with a word to the doctor that even Jonathan’s sharp hearing could not quite catch at this distance, she put down the large wooden cross she held, digging it into the ground, and walked over to him. Behind her, Jonathan’s circle of followers closed in on the two men and the fog intensified around them. It was almost finished.

“Mina,” he said, and smiled at her. “I knew you could not keep away. And I see you have brought me the other two nuisances. We will all be happy now.”

She said nothing, raising her chin, as if trying to convince him that she was unafraid. He laughed softly. How foolish of her, when he could hear how her heart was racing in terror, and how her thoughts turned to him – not yet the joy of rejoining him, but sadness for him, and guilt. He put out a hand to her cheek and felt her shudder under his touch, much as she had on the last time they had met in life. She did not move away, however, and he shifted his hand downwards, pulling away her scarf and unbuttoning her coat until he could touch the old scar. He felt her pulse leap under his fingers, if only for an instant.

“See, Mina?” he said.

She looked down, saying nothing.

“You should know there’s no reason to fear me,” he said. “Perhaps it’s too late now to claim you, but even if so, I shall end your misery, I promise. You shall die in my arms; you won’t be alone. I am not unkind – it is you that are unkind, dragging these poor souls back to suffer. Life is nothing but pain and suffering; you must have learned that by now. I offer the only escape there is.”

Jonathan kept his hand to her neck and stepped forward to kiss her cheek. She trembled under his hold and a slight, chill wind tugged at strands of her hair as the fog drifted about them.

“Mina,” he said softly. “Why make it so difficult?”

She lowered her head further, although he could not yet see into her thoughts: she must as yet have some protective article about her – that cross she’d worn about her neck earlier, most likely. It would not be enough. He moved earth-stained fingers along her jaw and felt her exhale, her body slackening in his hold.

“You’ll let them go, won’t you?” she said, as if making one last effort, managing to raise her gaze, if not for long. He steadied her as her head dropped down again. “Dr Seward and Major Graham.”

He pulled apart the remaining fastenings of her thick coat. “Of course I will,” he lied. “I’m only interested in you; I don’t care about them. Somehow, it _is_ always you, Mina, isn’t it?”

She shivered.

He pushed the coat open and loosened the thin silk scarf she wore around her collar and undid the tiny buttons of her blouse. Under it, he saw the glint of gold against her skin. It was as he had thought: the cross. “You don’t need that,” he said softly into her ear, careful to avoid pressing against her while she remained wearing it. “You don’t need anything but me – nothing but this. You remember, don’t you, Mina?”

“Yes, oh, yes,” she said. “Oh, Jonathan, I am so sorry.”

“It doesn’t matter – we’ll make it all right now,” he said, and inwardly smiled; a dark, exultant smile that might have belonged to his Master. “Take it off, Mina. You don’t want that. We’ll see if it’s not too late for you, my darling.”

Mina was still shaking in his arms as she fought with the clasp and pulled the necklace off. She held onto it, though, which irritated him. He reached out, grasping her wrist painfully, trying to make her drop it, but when she did, he saw that it was only a stupid trinket; a heart on a chain. He’d given it to her before they’d been married.

She put her other hand into her pocket and brought that very cross up against his face. He yelled out in pain, the hateful object burning into his cheek. He backed himself into the trunk of a blackened, bare tree, but as she produced nothing worse, he laughed again. “Mina, you can’t keep this up for long.”

“Oh, Jonathan,” he said, and he heard the unshed tears in her voice; the pitiable weakness of mortal flesh. “I don’t have to. Only for a few minutes more.”

Fear pierced him for the first time as he realised that the night was fading, despite the fog, and, between the cross and the tree, he was trapped. He hissed at her and fought to reach her. “Mina, Mina – you can’t do this to me!”

“No,” she said. “I expect not. But I don’t have to; I only have to let nature take its course.”

The world was turning from black to grey; soon the sun would be here. Jonathan snarled; a snared beast. “Let me go, Mina! I won’t hurt you; I’ll leave you all alone. Only think how you’ll regret this – have mercy! What unnatural wife would raise her hand to destroy her own husband?”

The sun rose behind her. The sky lightened in pink and orange.

“Mina!” he screamed at her.

She winced and her hand trembled, but she did not release him. “Jonathan,” she said, and she sounded like the schoolma’am he knew of old. “I do wish you’d stay still; I’m trying to help you.”

For one short but impossibly full moment, Jonathan felt the pale dawn sunlight on his face and cried out at the pain, but the great darkness inside him went first and he clutched at her hand. “Mina,” he tried to say, but his voice was dry; his voice was dust – he should have been dead years ago. He _was_ dead. Jonathan touched Mina’s face and managed a smile before he crumbled away. It didn’t seem to hurt any more.

 

Mina tumbled down into the earth and somehow, quite impossibly, there seemed to be no end to her fall. It was as in her dream – she was dead and buried beneath the earth, with no warmth left in her. It was not a dream, however, it was real. She fought desperately to breathe, shivering violently with the chill of the night.

She heard voices, as if from a long way off – Dr Seward and Major Graham, somewhere above this deep grave of hers – but she felt so very cold, and she couldn’t move or respond, her vision darkening as she failed to draw in air.

“Mrs Harker,” said Major Graham, still a tiny far away person. “Good God, Seward, what’s wrong with her?”

Dr Seward said nothing in reply, only pulling Mina up, and holding her against him. “Mrs Harker,” he said, trying to sound calm, but she could hear the tell-tale tremor in his voice. “It’s all right. It’s over. Breathe, do you hear me? You promised me you would live, remember.” He had insisted on bringing a blanket with them and he wrapped it around her now. Her shivering rapidly died down and she gasped in air, coming back to herself. She hadn’t fallen very far, after all, she realised with some surprise, only into a slight dip in the lie of the land. She had certainly not been buried under anything.

“You’re alive, and so are we,” Dr Seward said. He pulled out his hip flask and made her drink some brandy. 

She coughed, but it worked, bringing her fully back into line with reality. She breathed out more easily again and felt warmed, not only from the blanket and the brandy, or even from Dr Seward’s continued hold on her, but from something within that had seemed dead and frozen for almost twenty years. “You – you are both safe?” she asked, not liking to recall how she’d left them surrounded by vampires.

“We were well protected,” said Dr Seward. “We could not have been more so. However, I’d prefer if you never make another such request of me. It wasn’t easy to sit there and watch you walk into his power.”

Mina tried to smile. “All I had to do was buy us enough time. I could fail – as long as I kept hold of some help – my cross.” She closed her eyes, but she didn’t feel as pained as she had expected. Before he had crumbled away, she had been so sure that Jonathan – the true Jonathan, her Jonathan – had smiled at her. Perhaps it was only illusion, but every now and then there was no harm in clinging to illusion if it gave one comfort.

“Dr Seward,” said Major Graham. “Mrs Harker, we must go. Those creatures may be dust, but we are not yet safe. I’m unsure how far behind the lines we are – and in any case, we should have some difficulty in explaining ourselves even to our own people if we ran into them here.”

Dr Seward nodded, and helped Mina to her feet, the three of them making their way back to the road. He kept his arm around her, even though she hardly needed him to. She did not object. Perhaps Jonathan was right, perhaps Lucy too, all those years ago – perhaps life was nothing but pain and suffering. But at least it _was_ life and that, Mina had learned, was worth holding onto. Behind them, as they walked away, the sun rose higher in the sky. It might rain again later, but for now, the sun was breaking through the clouds, casting its weak, golden light over the countryside around them and, despite the ruined fields it laid bare, Mina could at last dare to believe that the long night was truly over.


	7. Coda

In the night, something stirred in the earth: this whole place was a graveyard, and these fields were made of blood and bones and despair. Despite the stillness, dust skittered across the uneven, muddy surface and settled in the dips and shadows. 

Fog followed it, covering the ground. It snaked in around the empty land, the collapsed trenches, the endless coils of barbed wire, and the shattered remains of buildings and trees. Its wisps touched Mina’s forgotten trinket, a lost heart on a chain, and it glinted almost silver rather than gold for an instant in an otherwise unseen, pale light.

There were strange shapes shifting about in the grey fog. If a sentry had been watching its approach, they might almost have dizzied him into believing he could see a figure in it.

 

Not far below the ground, a fallen soldier moved…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. I realise that WWI comes fairly high up the list of historical events that don't need any more horror added to them, but the link became far too obvious and natural to ignore once I had brought Jonathan's conversion into the early 20th C.
> 
> 2\. In 1911, Hull was indeed most likely the nearest place to Whitby with a crematorium. (Sometimes small bits of research result in terrible puns, what can I say?)
> 
> And a further note to my recipient: I know that you asked for darkfic, if possible, and that included (across the various fandoms) all the bad things happening to Jonathan, but I still feel I ought to nevertheless apologise for killing your favourite _twice_ in your gift fic, just in case that really wasn't the kind of dark you meant. (I had originally intended for the fic to end more ambiguously (at the point in the final section where Jonathan and Mina both want to 'save' the other) and you could decide yourself whom you wanted to 'win', but I just couldn't make it work when it came to it.)


End file.
